My Fight with Anxiety

Everybody has problems. Not everybody has to deal with their own mental illness.


All my life I have fought two debilitating forms of mental illness: Depression and Anxiety. You can add to those some lesser maladies: PTSD from what my shrink has called a “horrific” childhood (although I never looked upon it that way), Attention Deficit Disorder, and, maybe, borderline Schizophrenia. I guess mental illness never comes with a single neat label.


I have managed to function, sometimes better than others, sometimes in spite of my best efforts at self-destruction. That I have managed to get this far without destroying myself with ----- (insert your drug of choice)---- is due to the steadfast and sometimes tough love of my wife, to whom I owe more than I could repay in three lifetimes, some beloved friends who came into my life at just the right times, strong medication, and a very good psychotherapist. Too, I guess that maybe I benefitted from a little of what strength of character I possess, beaten and bruised though it may be.


At times, I have attempted self-medication through various forms of drug abuse, alcohol being my main drug of choice. I smoked a lot of marijuana, too. But it is not my purpose to provide what members of Alcoholics Anonymous (“friends of Bill”) call a “drunk-a-logue.” I have listened to far too many speakers at AA meetings to believe there is anything unique in my story. Besides, the details of my story aren't nearly as interesting and funny as some of those guys (and women) are. Seriously, some of them could be professional comedians. I don't know this for a fact, but I've been told the best of them actually get paid to speak, and they go around on an AA circuit, making all the big conventions. If you’ve never heard any of their stories, I urge you to attend two or three open AA speaker meetings or read the stories that make up the second half of the AA Bible, known as the “Big Book.” You will laugh, and you will cry, but in the end you’ll know pretty much everything that goes on in the life of an addict. The only thing unique about my story is that it happened to me and my family and what friends I have managed to make and keep.


I stopped going to AA meetings about twenty-five years ago, after five years of sobriety, when I realized that I was not alcohol-dependent but, rather, had been self-medicating for my mental illness and that the help I needed had to come from professionals rather than peers. Nevertheless, I honor and admire the organization because it demonstrably has helped so many people on the road to recovery, and it helped me stay sober when my life, or at least everything I held dear in my life, was hanging in the balance.


It has been a long battle, and I have by no means won. It is a never-ending battle. I don’t suppose it will ever be won until my body is consumed in flames after my death. In fact, as I am aging, the fight seems to be becoming even tougher. Right now, it seems that Anxiety is in ascendance, although the other diseases are always in contention. 


I don’t think anyone who hasn't suffered Anxiety, even people such as my best friends who are so sympathetic and empathetic, can truly understand what someone who suffers from Anxiety goes through. Even at the best of times an attack is never more than a harsh word or vicious comment away, even if the word or comment is not offered in a mean way. It doesn’t take much. I take prescribed anti-Anxiety and anti-Depression drugs that have done much to help me maintain my grip on sanity, and I do have medication to treat sudden attacks. The medication is physically addictive, however, and, hoping in spite of all experience that things will just blow over, I usually wait too long to take it, . 


Those of you who are of a certain age may remember a comic strip called Li’l Abner, which chronicled the lives of a small band of hillbilly caricatures in Dogpatch USA. It had a large rotating cast of characters, one of whom, Joe Btfsplk, represented doom, misfortune, and general bad luck. Anxiety was never mentioned as one of his attributes, but you can just see the anxiety written all over him. The storm was always on him or just about to break over him. And that is what anxiety is like. Anxiety is an anchor around your neck as you wander through life with this sense of impending doom that you can do nothing to prevent. You obsess over things. You read sinister meaning into any act by any person. Sometimes, your coping mechanisms fail, and you are just overwhelmed with dread. The feeling is more than angst—it is super-angst, and it can be terrifying. You sweat. Your stomach sinks and you feel a fear that is visceral and very real. Your heart pounds and your pulse races as your fight-or-flight response kicks in, but there is nothing to fight and nowhere to run. All you can do is cower, take a Xanax, and wait for the storm to pass. Except it never does, not really. 


That is when anxiety is at its worst, when it spills over into panic or near panic. That’s the way it has been for me...forever, I guess.(I remember a childhood full of anxiety, anxiety that was left untreated because I lacked the language and the courage to tell someone, and, besides, who could I have told? Certainly not my parents, and the people I could trust have been few and far between.) That kind of anxiety doesn’t consume me often, although once is too often. Misery such as this I wouldn’t wish on anybody. 

But there is a lesser anxiety always lurking near the surface. It is never debilitating but it allows you very few truly carefree moments, moments when you can just laugh and forget yourself. You might present a jovial face to your friends or at work—you might joke and laugh and cut up—people might think you're a real card. But then they might start to wonder, can he ever be serious about anything? You might even think for awhile that you’re okay, that you've got this thing licked. But if you let up your guard, you’re done for.

Almost as bad as the near-panic, is the effect Anxiety has on  your relationships. It's hard to maintain normal relationships when you're anxiously second-guessing every interaction with every person. When you have Anxiety, you have a hard time taking personal interactions at face value. You're always questioning gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice--always wondering, "What did s/he mean by that?" and always assuming the worst. If an email or a text message is not responded to, you always wonder what you did to cause offense. Did I piss somebody off? Did I go too far? Did I lose my friend? Your mind tells you that you  can't rely on your friends--what friends you have--despite the fact that every rational part of your brain insists you can. This is what Anxiety does to you.

You read things into every expression, every word, every gesture. You're always thinking that you're barely tolerated, that your friend is your friend out of pity, not because they see anything likeable in you. You become shy, and you hesitate to reach out. You constantly worried that you've said the wrong thing or that what you said will be interpreted wrongly. You hesitate to make even the most natural-seeming gesture, because you're afraid you'll be misinterpreted--and rejected. And you wart them constantly; you'll send a message or say something and then go overboard explaining how you didn't intend to cause offense, and even when you're assured that no offense was taken, you're still left with doubts. So you don't make many friends, and you have trouble keeping the friends you do make. 

You're hard on the friends you make. You're in constant need of reassurance. You're afraid that you bother them too much, that you make too many demands, that they'll get tired of you, that by word or deed they'll tell you to go away. So you're always apologizing, always explaining, always being a pain in the ass. Sometimes it seems as though friendship, solid though it is and that you know it is, is teetering on the edge.

In short, you live your life in fear. This is Anxiety, and you can't get rid of it despite all the evidence that says you're mistaken. This is not rationality. This is poison to the soul.
My wife and some other people--you know who you are-- have been very kind to me, exceedingly kind. They talk to me; they listen to me; they let me cry on their shoulder. I always feel better after I talk to them. I love them and I know they love me. But still, part of my brain just knows that rejection is coming. I hate to ask anything of my friends, even my best friends, out of fear that that will be the one request too far. That I'll be rejected. That I'll find myself without friends. This, too is what Anxiety does to you.

If you've read this far, you're probably wondering how on earth I ever got anything done. I guess I have given the impression that I live my life in a state of near panic. But that's not true. Much--if not most--of the time, I function well, and my symptoms quiet to a general state of unease, sometimes even to something approaching happiness. It is possible to experience periods--even extended periods--where  life seems almost normal. Prayer helps. Most days. I arrive at work by 6:30, and I spend fifteen minutes or so praying both aloud and silently. I don't ask God for anything; I just try to open myself and prepare myself to respond to God's call leading me down the best path for me each day. It helps, usually. And I know--I believe--God is right there with me, feeling my pain, sharing my burden. I have had two, possibly three, direct encounters with God, and when I think of those I can almost believe that all will be well. 

I started this blog post thinking I would write something poetic and moving—something with power and impact. I find I have been unable to do that; I have been unable to even come close. There is no way I can match the eloquence and moving qualities of some of the things I've read. But this is my story, and this is my way of telling it, flawed though it may be. I have been honest.  I have tried to tell you what it is like--not all the time but sometimes. 

In return for my honesty, I only ask that you be kind to me. I may be smiling and joking, but be kind to me anyway. And be kind to everyone you meet, for you know not what battles they may be fighting.

Process and Power

I have always been a Process theologian, more or less; I just wasn’t aware of it. I first became aware of the term, without knowing what it meant, when I was in seminary in 1999. A fellow student, who lived across the hall from me, mentioned it, but he was, frankly, intellectually challenged, and his explanations did not explain very much. 


There are several ways into Process Theology, but for me, it all begins with the understanding that God is not all-powerful. I have written about this concept before on this blog, and I have believed it for a long time. This belief is just one among several that would get me branded a heretic by many Christians. Five or six hundred years ago, it would have gotten me burned at the stake. (Not really; I’m a coward, and I would have recanted the second they showed me the implements of torture. There aren’t many things worth giving your life for—religious “truth,” when truth is such an amorphous thing that nobody can be sure of, isn’t one of them.) 


Admitting that God is not all-powerful is hard. But once you can get past that hurdle—and for most believers it’s a big one, to be sure—things start to fall into place. Suddenly, the “problem of evil” is solved. I can’t even estimate the number of times I’ve been told, or heard, or read, that someone became an atheist because an all-powerful God didn’t prevent some catastrophe, or that God allowed Hitler or Stalin to come to power, or that God allowed any number of other evils to flourish. And I have to admit I share some of their viewpoint. If I believed there was a God who could prevent evil or relieve suffering but didn’t—well, I would reject that God, too.


Orthodox Christians turn verbal and logical somersaults explaining why God permits evil to exist. Most of the explanations revolve around the assertion that “it’s all part of God’s plan” and that everything serves a purpose, and that it will all come out okay in the end. “God’s ways are mysterious,” they say, and it is not for us mere humans to understand God’s intentions or question God’s methods. Or maybe they’ll say that God is indeed all-powerful but deliberately holds that power in check in order to allow humans to exercise their free will. 


Well, I think that’s balderdash. If God is nothing else, God is love. The God I know is incapable of acting in other than a loving and compassionate manner. The God I know would never allow human or animal suffering if God could prevent it. And a loving God would never allow a 6-year-old girl to die a painful death from leukemia if that God could prevent it. What kind of God is it who could prevent but would allow millions of people to starve to death, be killed or displaced by sectarian conflict; who could prevent but would allow child abuse, rape, or other horrendous crimes? What kind of God is it whose plans include the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, Darfur, Wounded Knee, and all the rest? How on earth can one argue that this is somehow for our good? Saying things like, "It's a mystery," or "It's not for us to understand God's ways," just doesn't cut it. That kind of God is not a God of love, and I utterly reject the notion that my God is anything like that. Process Theology holds that because God is Love and always acts from love, God would prevent evil if it was within God’s power to do so. If evil exists, it is on us, not on God, because God cannot prevent it.

It bears repeating: if God could prevent evil, God would.


When you understand that God cannot prevent evil or bad things happening to good people, or good things happening to bad people, you no longer have to try to rationalize away the assertion that a loving God allows or even causes bad things to happen as some sort of master plan that we can’t understand. Which is easier to accept: that the God who is the very definition of love will allow or cause millions of people to starve to death in agony when that very same God could prevent it with ease, or that God agonizes over the starvation of those millions while being unable to prevent it?

And God does suffer with us. God is not omnipotent, but God is omniscient. But beyond that, God’s understanding, empathy, and compassion are perfect. When you hurt, God hurts with you. When you are hungry, God is hungry, too. When you are homeless, so is God.


God is indeed powerful. But God’s power is persuasive, not coercive. Ultimately, who is more powerful: the one who takes a gun and forces to do what you don’t want to do or to bear what you cannot bear, or the one who wins your acceptance and willing participation by appealing to your better nature and never giving up? God knows you better than you know yourself. God knows your needs even before you ask. And God is always with you, urging you on—luring you—into the best path given your circumstances. Some would say God is your conscience, but that would be wildly oversimplifying it. God works on a level that is far below any conscious thought we may have. We are not aware of it, but every second—every millisecond—of every day we are responding to God’s call. And no matter how we respond, God is always ready to adjust; God adapts. After each occasion in which you respond, to a greater or lesser degree, to God’s call, God re-evaluates and offers new possibilities and new choices to which we are given the choice to accept, or not.


And that is God’s power. God never tires; God never surrenders; God never gives up on us. God is now and forever by our side urging us along God’s path—the one that leads to universal peace and understanding, and economic, racial, and sexual equality. Whenever we act in love; whenever we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, or fight injustice of any kind, we are accepting God’s call, regardless of whether we know it; regardless of  whether we admit it.


My prayer today is that whoever may read this will gain some understanding, despite my poor word choice and compositional skills, but, more importantly, will respond to God’s call in love and with an open heart, seeking always to create the world God intends for us. Blessings upon us all--everyone, no exceptions.
Amen.

They Who Have Not Seen

Passing the time on a boring evening. No big woop. Here’s an example of how internal evidence might lead one to surmise that more than one author was at work in each of the New Testament Gospels, or, at least, that Jesus very likely didn’t say much of what was attributed to him.

Jesus, having been resurrected, comes to the house where the disciples had been staying (locked in, “for fear of the Jews”). It is Sunday evening. Jesus’ resurrection is immediately embraced by all who are present, save one—the Disciple Thomas (“Doubting Thomas”). Thomas literally cannot believe his eyes; he demands proof that the figure standing before him is indeed Jesus in the flesh. So he reaches out and touches and feels Jesus body and knows the resurrection is real.  “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (The Gospel of John 20:29 NRSV.)

Why would Jesus say such a thing—that those who have not seen him yet “have come to believe” in the resurrection are blessed. What would prompt that specific remark? Earlier that day, at the tomb, Mary Magdalene had encountered the risen Jesus and run to the disciples to tell them the news. John says nothing about whether the disciples believed her. But she believed in the resurrection. Jesus came to the disciples, and they believed in the resurrection. At this point, as far as we know, there is nobody who has not seen Jesus who believes in the resurrection—the word just hasn’t had time to get out. Israel in 33 C.E. had no mass communication. 

So why would Jesus speak in the present tense about a group of believers who have yet to exist? Why wouldn’t he say, “Those who believe without seeing me will be blessed” instead? It would be easy to say that belief was spreading around Jerusalem—John just doesn’t mention it. Or that Jesus knows something we don’t. Those explanations, however, require us to read into the text things that just aren’t there. No, all we have to go by is the text, and, according to the text, on Easter Sunday evening, the only people who believed in the resurrection were those who had seen him. In that context, Jesus’ statement makes no sense.

Consider, though, that the mainstream scholarly consensus is that John’s Gospel was written around the turn of the century, 65-75 years after Jesus’ death. By that time, it is more likely than not that nobody alive had seen the risen Jesus. Perhaps a very scant handful of people managed to beat the long odds, live into their 80s or 90s, and remember that famous day and year. In any event, it is almost dead solid certain that anybody living in 100 CE who believed in the resurrection took it on faith and only on faith. Those were days when the Church had been persecuted from Jerusalem to Rome. It is easy to lose belief when belief comes at the cost of an excruciating death. Those Christians may well have needed some reassurance that their faith was not in vain. They needed to know that there was a point to their suffering and that they would be justified—blessed—in the end. In that context, it makes perfect sense that the Gospel writer or editor would put these words of encouragement on Jesus’ lips, not as a historian but as a pastor assuring a wavering Church that their faith was in something real even if unseen.

Remember the Gospel writers were not writing history and they especially were not writing up to modern historical research standards. They were writing theology. I don’t think they would have had a problem putting words in Jesus’ mouth that were consistent with his character and probably would have said in the appropriate circumstances. Such projection happens all the time. It’s sort of like the words, “Father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down that cherry tree.” We all know that the cherry tree story was a total fabrication of Parson Weems, yet the words ring true. Why? Because Washington could well have said them had those circumstances arisen. They were totally within what we know of his character.

Frustration and Sadness

I am a minister without a flock of even a single parishioner. I long to share the love of God with someone, and pray with them, because it is in those actions that I can truly feel God’s love and caring and help them do the same. People need to hear the Gospel—not the gospel that is preached in so many of our churches today. The Gospel has nothing to do with Jesus’ divinity, or lack of it. It has nothing to do with who his father and mother were or what special qualities they had. It has nothing to do with miracles. The Gospel is in the words  Jesus spoke. And people need to hear the words he spoke, but more importantly they need to feel them in their hearts. They need reassurance. They need to know of God’s infinite love—infinite, but individual. People need to know that God’s love extends to them personally—that God carries each of us very close to God’s great heart, always. They need to feel God’s comfort and encouragement when they are grieving.

I have, over the years, attempted to convey that love to so many people. At first I wrote letters in the hope and expectation it would help me make friends, but I soon learned to expect nothing. I still hoped, but eventually I gave that up, too. For years now, I have written letters sharing God’s love with no expectations and no hope. I guess that is what altruism is. Yet I am in no way altruistic, for in every letter I write, in every conversation I take part in, I issue an unspoken, yet no less real, invitation to take the relationship to a deeper level so that we can experience God together. In that invitation, I suppose, I still hope and on some level expect that it will happen.

Yet my invitation has never been accepted. I expect that each of us experiences God in his/her own way. I cannot find fault or be angry with any individual.  But when after years not one single person has called upon me to share my experience with them and they with me, I have to accept that there is something wrong with me—that there is something my character that drives people away or at least stays their approach. So, I can’t think of a single person I could call upon in times of spiritual crisis and know that they would respond. And I can’t think of a single person who would call on me.

People need to be ministered to. I need to minister. We will never get together.,

My Memories of Liz

The first great love of my life, and I’ve only had two, was a woman in San Angelo, Texas named Liz Marquis. She was going by the name of Liz Honea when I first met her, and that was the name she took back after her brief marriage to that smooth-talking self-indulgent viper, Roger. I met her in the same way I met one of my oldest and best friends, Mike Breen, through our work on a play at the San Angelo Civic Theatre, “Dial M for Murder.” I played a British detective; Mike played a would-be murderer who was himself killed; Liz was nominally part of the crew, but mainly she was just hanging out. When we first met, she told me how much she enjoyed my performance in another play, “Night Watch,” in which I played an over the top gay gossip columnist in a performance that would just not be acceptable today. Naturally that endeared her to me, and we struck up a friendship. She thought I was hilarious; as a result, I thought she was wise and insightful.  That friendship and endearment later developed into my full-fledged infatuation with her, an infatuation that later developed into a deep, true love. She was my first true love; I think she loved me back.

Hardly a week has passed since she died in 1981 that I have not thought about her. She was a plain woman, and tall for her sex. She was not beautiful. She was five or six years older than I and her body had started to spread out just enough to be soft and full and…sexy. Sometimes I feel guilty thinking about how I loved her. Feeling guilty is my default setting, of course, but it seems somehow disloyal to Carol to be carrying a torch after all these years. To be clear: Carol is the woman I married, and she is the universe to me; “I am quite contented nowadays to have joined my life with [hers].” But I can’t help it: every time I think of Liz, which, as I’ve said, is often, my old passion and, let’s be honest, lust comes back to me as strong or even stronger than when we parted in 1979.

I really can’t say why I fell in love with her or why I stayed in love with her through thick and thin. She was never “my girl” in the sense that we shared romance—romance always seemed tantalizingly just out of reach. We never had sex although God knows I wanted to—we came awfully close a time or two. She was a failed human being in many ways, or maybe just the victim of a lifetime of bad luck. She was married and divorced three times. She was poor as a church mouse. She was self-effacing and humble to a fault—somewhere along the line virtually all of her self-confidence had been beaten out of her. She was a sucker for a certain sort of sweet-talkin’ confidence man, slender and oh-so-charming (Which, I guess, is one major reason that we never went to bed.  Being fat has prevented me from so many sexual liaisons. Not only has it made me unattractive to women, it has put my self-esteem in the gutter along with Liz’s. In fact, my guess is that I never would have landed Carol if I hadn’t lost a lot of weight in the Fall-Winter of 1979-80. On the other hand, my involuntary near-celibacy kept me safe from sexually transmitted diseases and paternity claims. It’s an ill wind…) But she was smart and funny, and she liked me—really liked me. She loved me after her fashion, and I think that despite my size she would have eventually married me, which was my heartfelt desire, had things turned out differently, i.e., if Carol hadn’t come along or Liz hadn’t died.

We spent a lot of time together. Much of the time we were alone together at her mother’s lake house, but mostly we were together with the members of our ka-tet (see Stephen King’s Dark Tower books). Before her ill-fated marriage to the rank and evil son-of-a-bitch Roger and ill-fated sojourn to California, we were both a part of a group-of-five that consisted of folks who had the Civic Theatre in common: me, Liz, Roger (whom I liked before I discovered what a pathological narcissist he was), Mike Breen who was my best friend and who remains one of my two best friends (and, to his credit, was the first among us to see through his Roger's  “mellow” new-age persona), and a woman whose name I can’t remember (Diane? Diana?), who was a sergeant in the Air Force and Roger’s girlfriend before he grew tired of her and decided to prey on the vulnerable Liz instead.

1977 was a magical year for me, right up until I moved to Oregon to live with Mike there. The five of us did virtually everything together. We were together constantly, usually smoking vast quantities of Mexican dirt weed (Back then, you had to smoke a lot if you wanted to get high.) and listening to music—usually on the sound system, but sometimes Mike—a gifted singer/songwriter/guitar player) would sing for us some of the songs he had written and some covers (Liz and I both were taken with his rendition of Paul Simon’s “Duncan.”). I was living with Mike at the time (sharing a house, that is, lest ye get the wrong impression) at a place we dubbed “Baxter’s” after the Jefferson Airplane album. You know that Fleetwood Mac album that sold so many copies back then? “Rumors?” (That was the one that in retrospect was nothing more than a formulaic collection of ten three-minute tunes strung together, each designed for maximum commercial appeal. It seemed as if each song was only included after extensive focus-group testing.) It was the virtual soundtrack of my year. I still enjoy listening to that album, hackneyed and trite though it may be. 

I was constantly following after Liz and thought I was in love with her that summer (it wasn’t until the next year that I learned to truly love her), but she only had eyes—sexual eyes, anyway—for fuckin’ Roger. He could be a seductive bastard. The fact that she wasn’t very modest and had a casual attitude about how much skin she showed, practically never wearing a brassiere, only fueled my horniness. I did a lot of jacking off back then, and most of it was while I was thinking about her. Even now she sometimes comes up in my fantasies. But it wasn’t just her appearance that made her seductive to me. As I have mentioned, her appearance was plain—no one except someone who was—or thought he was—in love with her would have called her beautiful. She had lived a hard life, and it was starting to show. (Having said that, I do want to emphasize that she was not unattractive by any means.) She never seemed preoccupied with her appearance, the way so many of us seem to be. She used little or no makeup. She wore her hair in a practical short cut, and she always dressed as though she had come straight from Goodwill, but tastefully. She seemed unconcerned about her appearance and seemed to have no qualms about appearing in public in her bathing suit. No, it was not her looks, per se, that won my heart, though she had a dazzling smile: it was the way she carried herself with her soft aura of sensuality and affect of vulnerability (I was to learned that she didn’t just appear vulnerable—she really was vulnerable). And, despite the chaos that was her life, she always seemed centered, an act, of course. And she always made me feel like the most important person in the world when she was with me (Was that an act?). She was kind and generous. She was the world to me.

She wasn’t afraid of intimacy and touching me. She was very sensual—not overtly sexual (not with me, anyway)—but we kissed each other frequently and held each other in our arms. Full body hugs were routine, and sometimes we would just sit across from each other and explore each other’s face, gently outlining our lips, chin, jawline, forehead. How I craved her touch!

She loved sitting in the candle light, listening to music. At night, we would switch from “Rumors” to an album by a band I’ll bet you never heard of but that we loved: American Flyer. I loved that album. Years later I found a CD of it: I treasure it and listen to it , growing melancholy, every now and then. Or maybe we’d listen to that Eagles album that contained “Lyin’ Eyes.”

She married that devious Fritz Perls-loving bastard Roger and moved with him to California, not very long before I pulled up stakes and went to live with Mike in Oregon. After a couple of months of sponging off Mike’s kind and generous parents, I decided I couldn’t hack it and moved back home, tail between my legs. I got a job on the night shift at the San Angelo Center (for the adult mentally retarded) and proceeded to mark time, waiting, I suppose, to grow up.

But in the Late Fall or early Winter, word somehow came to me that Liz was back from California—without the sociopath. I called my friend Carol Price, whom Liz adored, and asked her if it was true what I had heard and, if so, if she thought Liz would want to see me. Carol replied that it was true and that Liz had told her that she would love to see me. I called her that very day, and we got together.

Between that day and the day I left San Angelo to attend law school in Austin, we spent at least some time together almost every day. It was during that period I realized that what had been mere infatuation on my part had evolved to mature love, and, on reflection, I believe she came to love me, too. There is nothing—nothing—that feels as fine as loving and being loved in return. I know that I was the most constant friend she ever had. Nobody—not her mother, not her father, not any of her husbands—gave her the kind of unconditional love and support that I gave her. Well, maybe her children.

It was unconditional--really, unconditional--love that I offered her, and it was unconditional love and support that she needed. There were things I longed for, but I never asked anything of her.  She was emotionally worn out and frail. I like to think that’s why I didn’t press her, but it was probably because I was a coward. I'm certainly not made of the stuff of nobility. As I said, she returned from California a broken woman. Liz would never speak of it, but I learned from Carol Price that the Beast Roger had physically beaten her. I learned, too, that Liz had become pregnant and lost the baby. Carol didn’t know for sure, but from comments Liz made, Carol believed she lost the baby as the result of Roger’s battery.

At any rate, for nine months or so, Liz and I were best of friends. We had lunch together, dinner together, and went to the park together. We had long talks—some substantive, others frivolous. We took in a movie from time to time. We held hands a lot. We kissed—not makeout kisses, but serious for all that. The one thing we didn’t do together was have sex. I didn’t even try. I wonder if she thought that strange? But I just couldn’t bring myself to push the issue. Instead, we became soul mates. I wanted to marry her, but I never asked. I think she would have said yes, but maybe I’m just kidding myself. (I do that a lot.) I wanted to spend my life with her more than I had ever wanted anything. But then I went to law school; Liz and I didn’t drift apart, exactly, but we were no longer together. I met Carol and found that I could love another while still being love with Liz. I took Carol to meet her, kind of like taking her home to meet my parents. I was so happy when they hit it off.

Carol and I were married in March, 1981. We went home to San Angelo for Christmas, returning to Austin on December 26. On December 27, my mother called with the news that Liz was dead. I found out later that she died in a hotel room in Lubbock after being treated that day at the emergency room. I never found out what her illness was. Mother called because she had seen the funeral notice in the paper; it was too late to get to San Angelo for the funeral, but I drove to her mother’s ranch in Mertzon in the freezing weather to find her children, by themselves in a mobile home, calmly making their dinner. Little Rachal Honea told me that she was glad I had come because she knew there was “something special” between Liz and me and Liz had often spoken of me fondly. I stayed awhile in silence.  I could find no words to say. Then went out to my car. It was a half-hour or more before my tears dried enough for me to drive. I feel so disloyal to Carol, now, as I relate my feelings of sorrow, but a person gets only one first love, and I think Carol understands.

I wonder what would have become of us had I stayed in San Angelo and married Liz or if she had moved to Austin with me. Or if I had stayed and things had just continued as they were. Perhaps we would have been happy. I know we would have been happy for a while. I may be kidding myself, but I truly believe I gave her the happiest days she knew. But she was a sad woman, and I am essentially a sad man. My guess is that, in the end, our sadness would have won out and we would have parted. Our last real moment together came the night before I left for Austin as we stood outside and she kissed me more fiercely than I have ever been kissed. For a golden moment we were each other’s universe. I will never forget the taste of her mouth and the warmth of her body. I will never forget her kindness or her friendship. I will always feel her loss.

Twelve hours or so since I posted this,and now I'm sort of regretting it. Second guessing myself all over the place. What if our relationship, from her point of view, wasn't at all as I've described it? What if she thought I was ridiculous? What if she thought I was some sort of stalker or emotional leech and was just being nice to me? Shit. This always happens after I post something. Writer's remorse. I should be happy that no one ever reads this thing, except I know at least two people--good friends--have read it, because I sent it to them. I hope they.re not laughing up their sleeves at me.

Help Wanted

I need a prayer partner. I am not looking for a spiritual director. I may need a spiritual director, but the thought of being in any sort of hierarchical relationship, even one so benign as spiritual direction, leaves me cold. I do not want to sit at the feet of a mentor. I do not want to feel obligated to report back or turn in “homework” assignments. I don’t want to talk about spirituality—I do, really, but in another context—I want to do spirituality. I simply want a relationship with a person with whom I can meet—every week or more often if it should develop that way—as an equal partner and, keeping chit chat to a minimum, hold hands and just pray. I don’t want to be a student; I do not want to be a teacher; I just want to pray with another pilgrim. Aloud. Back and forth as moved by the Holy Spirit. I want a friend with whom I can experience God in a way that I never can alone.

Praying together, however, is such an intimate thing. It takes trust, and I don’t know of anyone who would trust me enough to share the experience of God. I have known a few such people—Shelley Wagener, my old pastor, and Amy Adams, my old friend, for example—but now, I just don’t know. I have a friend out in Texas with whom I would like to pray, but I don’t bring it up because I know that she is intensely private about her spirituality.

So I wander, breathlessly, experiencing God as I can, always trying to live in a state of grace. It is so hard.

Working Through the Process

Everything that exists, exists only insofar as it is in relationship with everything else. Every moment, or occasion, of our existence consists of our creative response to the sum of every other occasion—in all time, everywhere—that has come before. As the man said, no person is an island; no island, even, is an island. We are not only part of everything we have experienced, but we are a part of everything that everything we have experienced has experienced which is, in turn, part of everything else all the way back to the big bang. And it is all a part of us.

In every argument with an atheist concerning God's (non) existence, sooner or later, without fail, the atheist will offer the problem of evil as proof that God does not exist. We all know the argument: if God exists, why did God allow evil into the world, even create it? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? The God on whom they hang this argument—the God the atheists reject—inevitably is some variation of the bearded white man sitting on his throne up in heaven, micromanaging our lives and generally screwing up his creation. This caricature—or a slightly more sophisticated and nuanced version of it—is the only God they will admit and the God they reject. Well, hell, I'm atheistic about that God myself.

God is the author of all possibilities; God is not the director of our lives. It is true that God has a plan for you, but it is not that you be either rich or poor, sick or well, black or white, happy or unhappy. It is not God's plan for you to enter a particular profession—even the ministry—or even to be a particularly nice person. God does not: choose your sex or race, grant you “abundance” if you do the right things, or keep you from falling from the sky in a crippled aircraft. God does not randomly select persons on whom to bestow either blessings or curses. Bottom line: God didn't get you that promotion. God didn't send that tsunami. God did not and does not do those things, because God cannot do those things. Our God is not that kind of God. The fact is that God is not the omnipotent, omniscient super being at which the atheists scoff and who makes it so difficult to answer their constant question, “If there is a God, why did [fill in your catastrophe] happen?”

I can't say why bad or good things happen, but I can say it's not because God allows or causes them to happen. It is not within God's power to cause anything to happen or not to happen. Things happen to humans as a result of the interplay of natural laws, the exercise of free will by ourselves and others, and pure blind chance.

But God is always there, always interested in us, always urging us on to our best. Each occasion of existence builds on the occasion before. Each occasion is the result of what the preceding occasion has transmitted, which is nothing more than an attempt to replicate itself, as it is affected by every simultaneously occurring occasion and harmonized by our own creative response. Even if we think we respond automatically, without thinking, our response is the result of a process wherein we choose how the next moment will play out from among a number of alternatives.

One of those alternatives will be the one that God has chosen for us, that God desperately wants to choose. This is the alternative that will result in the best of all outcomes, the best launching pad into the next occasion in a series of occasions that lead to fulfillment of “God's Plan.” We can choose God's path, or we can choose another—it's totally up to us. But here's the thing: no matter how we proceed, God is undeterred. God is active in this process. God understands the choice you have made in all its dimensions (as you probably don't) and adjusts God's own plan to the new reality, the new occasion, wherein God will again offer the God alternative.

And what is God's plan for us? It is not a plan at all, really—it is an ever changing series of choice offerings—but the goal is that you emerge in union with God as a reflection of God's love and an agent of God's grace.