A test

So, the New Year has started brilliantly. The Polar Bear Plunge was a great, positive way to begin 2017, and I’m so thrilled and surprised by people’s support – to the tune of £675 raised for Mind. I’ve had a productive week with work, despite the kids being at home for most of it. And we’ve booked three holidays already for the year ahead – Paris, the Lake District and Center Parcs – and I’m looking forward to all of them, rather than worrying about how I’m going to cope away from home.

Today, though, was a test. The first Bible study of the New Year. I’ve only made it along once, maybe twice, since my hospitalisation, and although I’m feeling so much better in myself, doing anything church-related is still causing me so much anxiety because of this ongoing ‘you’re not suitable to be one of us’ situation.

I’d psyched myself up for it mentally, but then the last-minute rescheduling from parish centre to vicarage nearly undid me.

It’s one thing to sit in church; another entirely to sit in the living room of the person who can’t accept me as a proper part of the church family.

It was SO TEMPTING not to go. I started justifying it to myself: I had too much to do; I could get more work done if I gave it a miss.

But I knew at the same time that if I didn’t go, it would be a massive vote of no-confidence in my psychology sessions, which are focusing on not letting my feelings/insecurities/baggage from the past get in the way of my values.

So I went. I went, and it was damned hard. Not least because of the subject of our study: contentment. It felt a bit like it was all aimed at me: ‘what have you got to be depressed about when you have eternal righteousness and citizenship and forgiveness with God?’ I know it wasn’t, at all, but it felt like it. And then when the conversation turned to celebrity suicides, it was all I could do to sit there and not just walk out.

How can any of them comment on the desire to take one’s own life if they haven’t been in that place? Do any of them know how little – for me, at least – it had to do with earthly contentment?

‘Meh, life’s a bit rubbish; I haven’t got a big enough house, small enough waistline, clever enough kids, enough money in the bank, so I think I’ll kill myself.’

It’s just so far from the truth.

But I didn’t leave. And what really validated that decision for me was when, over lunch afterwards, Hannah congratulated me on being there and said it was a measure of how well I am that I could actually do it, especially at the vicarage.

It is. I am.

That leads me, though, into dangerous territory, when I start to think, ‘Well, if I’m well enough for that, I’m well enough to be doing Hotshots/Sunday school/whatever else I want to be involved in, and it’s not fair that I’m STILL not allowed.’

It’s dangerous territory because while I’m still so very hurt, and while I’m really struggling not to feel rejected and to feel like I still have a place in the church, I’ve made a decision that I don’t want to leave – which means that I have to get used to a new way of being.

I need to get used to a new way of being where I’m not one of the ‘inner sanctum’ of the church family any more.

I need to accept that I won’t be involved in any of the activities I once was, and as a result, I won’t be consulted about things, my opinion won’t be valued, I won’t be included in the same things that I used to be.

I need to try to see the positives in the situation (hey, I have SO MUCH more time on my hands these days, and won’t it be fab in the summer to just drop the kids at Hotshots and go home for a few hours’ peace?). I need to see it as a good thing that I’m no longer involved in Sunday school, because I can listen to sermons live rather than afterwards online.

Acceptance is, according to the psychologist (and I know she’s right), a massive part of my ongoing recovery. It’s not easy, and I shouldn’t expect it to be easy; it’s natural and normal and even *right* that it’s going to feel difficult. It was today, hugely so. But I gritted my teeth and stuck it out because I don’t want this frankly ridiculous decree about my suitability for church work to be the wedge that comes between me and my friends and, more importantly even than that, me and God.

It was a test, today. There will be many more. But I feel I’ve passed the first one.