Teaspoon of Hell

The psychic fog has lifted quite a bit over the past week. It's all due to God's grace ultimately, but some of the intermediaries are the love, prayers, and patience of my wife, the sacrament of confession, the daily cycle of church services available to me, the familiar prayers of my prayerbook, the prayers of my spiritual father, sessions with a skilled counselor, SAMe, my own prayers, fasting, and to cover all the other countless things I don't know about: "the strong hand of God hidden in the shadows" (to steal a line from Mark Heard). I'm grateful for the return of energy and the respite from the hellish self-focus. BUT. . .now that the fog has lifted, I need to pull out of the rest area and get on with the road-trip. . .i.e. I need to get back to the work of repentance.

I had let down my guard over the past months, perhaps stretching back a couple years. Slowly by slowly I compromised on "small" things of "marginal importance". Like King David lolling about on the roof watching Bathsheeba bathe instead of being out on the battlefield with his men, I grew weaker and weaker until I slept with her and murdered her husband. Despondency, at least for me, is an "unpredictably manageable" glimpse of hell. The burning concoction of agitation, lethargy, fear, anxiety, hopelessness and loneliness, which eventually brings about physical changes in my body, is humiliating in its' ability to dehumanize me. This latest episode scared me and I hope put a little fear of God into me.

During the first confession I ever gave to a priest-monk, soon after coming into the Orthodox Church, I was told that the only cure for my inordinate self-love and pride was, "to taste hell by the bucketful." I didn't really comprehend what he was saying. I almost had the attitude of, "bring it on God. . .I want to be rid of these besetting sins." But after gagging on this little teaspoon of hell that God allowed me to swallow over the past few weeks, I realize that tasting hell by the bucketful would drive me insane for sure.