Rising Tension
Joyce didn’t want to do it. And it wasn’t the tension of a six-hour drive from Toronto to Elliott Lake that bothered her. With clear highways she welcomed the summer road trip. Not yet an empty nester like herself her younger sister was often pre-occupied, sandwiched between caring for three teenagers and aging in-laws. Joyce looked forward to catching up. But the conversation waiting at the other end had her in knots. Would Dad come on board this time? She hoped to avoid another heated argument. In the car she and Irene would have time to talk.
The changes in Mum’s behaviour that were obvious to her and Irene seemed to be taking root in their father’s mind. After a long, confining winter he was admitting something was wrong. Not so at Christmas when they had tried to talk. He had stormed out of their childhood home.
Now he complained Mum was doing and saying the strangest things, his incredulity clear on their last call.
“It was the damnedest thing, Joyce; unbelievable. I fought with your mother on how old she is.”
She had insisted to her husband, “I am eighty-five years old.”
“Helena,” he had countered, “you are not eighty-five, you are eighty-three years old.”
“No, Will. No, I’m not. I’m eighty-five.”
Not willing to let it go he had pushed on, “Helena, what year were you born?”
“Will, you know very well what year I was born. I don’t have to tell you. We just celebrated my birthday.”
Her default response had become “you know…I don’t have to tell you” when called to remember intimate details of her life. And the birthday they celebrated two weeks earlier was their son’s, not hers. The increasing lapses frustrated him; his wife had always been keenly organized and on top of birthdays, appointments, and family stuff.
“Do the math.” Will had challenged.
Helena had been a fine bookkeeper in her day. “You were born in 1934 and it’s now 2017. How old does that make you?”
A momentary confusion had flashed across her face soon replaced by anger.
“I don’t have to tell you. You already know.”
And this time Helena huffed out of the house with the parting shot “I don’t have time for this nonsense I have gardening to do,” and she had slammed the door shut in her wake.
But she didn’t know. She wasn’t just forgetting basic math, sometimes she couldn’t remember words for everyday items like spoon or fork. And things showed up in strange places. At Christmas she insisted her watch was stolen yet Irene found it in the fridge freezer in a jar of ground coffee.
The tension and worry arising from these incidents prompted the summer trip to Elliott Lake. Maybe Dad was ready to talk about Mum’s mental decline and especially what to do.
Tension Triggers
In a spiritual life, and particularly a Christian faith-life whose foundational premise is love, joy, peace, and hope, one might think tension’s presence contrary to successful spiritual living. Tension and stress being the enemy, as you were, battling to rob a believer of equanimity. But this is contrary to God’s intent. Tension, rather, is her fashioning tool that sculpts the foundational premises of love, joy, peace and hope; the trigger that propels change and transformation.
When one arrives at a place distinctly uncomfortable, where life loses balance and falls off the tracks–like out of whack medications, over-indebtedness, crushing work-loads and so on, this is the motivator for change. With ants in your pants you want to move to get rid of them.
It was tension from a call by God that drove Mother Teresa to care for the poor on the streets of Calcutta, India (refer:http://wp.me/p89n5f-5B).
It was tension that drove the Apostle Paul to Damascus (a tension focused on murder) and tension that stopped Paul’s ruinous ambitions (God’s tension focused on Paul’s heart to stop him from murder). (Control+click on: Acts 9:1-5 RSV).
It was tension that drove Jesus to Jerusalem and his last days. His and God’s plan depended on it (Control+click on: John 10:10 RSV).
It is tension that God uses to motivate when we need to seek help. Tension is not our enemy. It is a gift that when rightly channeled leads to life-transforming change. It is so “…they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10 (NRSV)
The next blog post will continue in two weeks time.
Does God use tension to motivate change?