Time, Love, Time

I was back in the counselling hot-seat yesterday and it was a bit unusual as, although I’d really psyched myself up for talking about some of the things I’ve been mulling over the last week or so (seeing my parents has made me think a lot about the years my dad was drinking again, and how disordered our relatiohship still is – and both are things  I find hard to express), L and I ended up just talking about (or rather, she talked and I sat and wished I could run away and hide) about how there’s so much I don’t want to raise just yet and how from her perspective, I am putting a lot of pressure on myself to get it out in the open so I can move on and get through this. There’s something pretty miserable about being crap at being counselled to be honest. However, in realising that there’s no way I’ll have said all I need to say, learned all I need to learn, and put myself back together by the end of the sixth session in two weeks (I initially had to sign up for six), I do feel less pressure to try and force myself to ‘perform’, which, when I get stuck and unsure, and closed off, just makes me feel worse and as though this is something else I’m failing at. Pushing through it when mentally I’m still trying to resist being open takes so much energy that I just don’t have at the moment. If I imagine finishing counselling in a few months as opposed to a few weeks, the time I have to get through extends, and I change the odds. It still feels an awful lot like betting on a three-legged horse, and not in a Seabiscuit, rooting for the endearing underdog way, more like a ‘seriously, just give this horse to some Frenchmen to make into pies and leave the betting to the real men’ kind of way. NB must remember to stay away from metaphorical Frenchmen. And probably real ones, if we’re being at all realistic.

In my heart, I was afraid of what it would mean if I reached that six week benchmark and was still so resolutely not-ok. The last year has been benchmark after benchmark of hoping medication would work, then finding it hasn’t, then changing the dose, and finding that still doesn’t help, then waiting for Christmas to be over, exams to finish, the winds to change, the earth to move, the sun to rise, you get the picture. It’s frustrating. All the emails I get from supervisors and medical school staff indicate that I should be moving further forward than I am, and it’s hard to accept that this is something that I am only able to do at a snail’s pace (possibly even the pace of an unfortunate French snail), and even more difficult to have the courage and sense of self to say that to them. As a medical student and hard-grafter, I’m so used to living by each deadline and knowing what needs doing by when – without my diary, I’m pretty lost. In the last few weeks, being extremely organised to the point of obsession has helped me keep going and tick things off the long list I have to complete.  But, I’m starting to learn that I can’t put a deadline on healing and recovery, although, of everything, I so wish I could. I can’t even make a timeline. I can’t set myself rules and goals and expectations, apart from doing what I can each day. The sense of unpredicatibility is unnerving.  My heart continues to beat out the time signature of my life, but will not be dictated to by my sense of scheduling. It doesn’t pay much attention to cries of accelerando, heart! Accelerando! I have to just live alongside it, and let it sit with me until I’m through.

The Bible has a lot to say about time, and these three sections in particular come to mind. James 4:13 that says there is no point planning for tomorrow for you never quite know what it will bring, which I take as a reminder that as Rabbie Burns would say, the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley. No planning can be 100%. No one can predict what’s heading round the corner or coming through the front door. Uncertainty is a heavy cloak mankind must learn to bear, balanced with the shields of faith on sale in old Ephesus. As a Christian, I suppose you could argue time does not matter – eventually, we’ll all be outside of time; we’ll be with God in Heaven. As far as I know, no one wears Rolexes there; once you’re standing in eternity, being fifteen minutes late sort of seems like a daft thing to worry about.

When we let got of time, we let go of a lot of worries. God is the only one of us who lives outside of time, unchanged and unaltered by it, seeing it as just another dimension to life on a sinful Earth that one day will cease to be.  When I think of being outside of time, I think about those conversations you have in the middle of the night, with a close friend, heart on heart, when morning seems so far away, and there is so much stillness that somehow everything except that rare feeling that you’re in the exact same place as someone else at the  exact same time, seems to fade. It’s not often that we get to live outside of time. Similarly, Ecclesiastes has that well known section on everything having its own time and place under the sun  –  a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak. Perhaps, I’ve done my time of tearing, and now is the time for mending and healing. It says nothing about all those times being equal in length or measure. It says nothing about there being a clear signpost for when you’re switching from one extreme to the other. It says nothing of having a choice about what time and place you find yourself in each conflicting phase. We just have to know that those extremes of experience will come and go, chop and change, and be wide-eyed and open handed, ready to accept them as they come. An order of Goliath proportions – large, but arguable vanquishable with the right weapons and a little ingenuity.

Lastly, Romans, eloquent and emotive Romans, the book you can count on to bring you home each and every time – the sat-nav epistle by a conveniently well-travelled Apostle – reminds us that the only person with perfect timing, every time, all time, is God. He is the only one who stands outside of time, unchanged by it, and unafraid. God has enough time, for you and me. Chapter 5:6 says, just at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly’. He didn’t’ show up awkwardly early before the world was fully ready to weigh up the pros and cons and finally decide after conducting several opinion polls that moving for Jesus was the best move they could make. He didn’t wreak havoc by turning up late and leaving a string of people in a very scary, un-saved lurch, as though they’d missed getting the stamp on their passport needed to get in Heaven. Jesus came at the right time. He keeps our time. He gives us, time.

This is a song by Josh Ritter, whom I love mostly for his music, but also because he’s the only musician I have introduced my younger brother (who has to think he’s more cool than the rest of us in order to function, or so it seems….) to that he also thinks is great (our relationship suffered quite the blow when I asked him to download me some Girls Aloud, though a mutual love of Josh is slowly rectifying that..…). My favourite song of his is probably ‘Monster Ballads’, but I also love this one. When I listen to this, it reminds me that changing the speed I try to live at isn’t always a bad thing – by going at the right pace, I’ll get there that much sooner. Less haste, more speed seem like wise words right now. It’s only a change of time, love, time.