TRUTH . . . CAN BE PAINFUL

Sometimes it seems we'll never get an answer to some of our hang-ups. The Divine Providence seems either deaf or uninterested. At times like this illumination eludes us as we ache to move ahead for the benefit of ourselves and others suffering with us. This has been particularly the case with regard to my inordinate concern for my family and my constant failure to let them live their own lives. Doubtless another form of the worrying disposition I have referred to before.

'You've never let them go!' my well-meaning colleagues would often say. Easier said than done. But God knows I wanted to get off their backs, for my overbearing concern has been a lifelong attitude which hasn't done them any good at all. There is a world of difference between being available for someone and driving them crazy with attempts to prevent their suffering.

A short while ago, in some desperation over my possessiveness, I considered the use of a hypnotherapist. There is very little I haven't considered! Maybe he could uncover the reason I was always molly-coddling? Prayer and counselling had not succeeded, that's for certain. Of course, as usual, I was looking for an instant cure-all, but soon learned that it might take months of treatment, painful tears and possibly boxes of tissues to uncover the root cause of the problem. I decided to postpone that approach as I had been warned against stress by the consultant after my recent stroke.

Then God moved 'in a mysterious way' and caught me by surprise. I say 'God', but I trust by now you have realised that although I could not adequately describe him, I see his hand in everything. Talking with a friend of mine who is a psychotherapist and was then also a vicar at the same time, we were travelling over familiar ground about my persistent feeling of sadness even though being the life and soul of the party. I knew it all sprang from way back in early childhood, but all those fears sown by my adoptive mother and the late discovery of the adoption itself, didn't seem to account for the emotion of sadness. There was something else causing this. Though what it was and what it had to do with my possessiveness, I could not see. Then suddenly and inexplicably, while we were just talking, I knew what the problem was that had dominated my early years and was causing continual sadness now.

I was lonely.

Loneliness was somewhere, somehow, at the root of all this over-caring I was sure. Now I was in possession of new information, but I didn't see how it could help me at all. I remembered having an inkling of this years before, but had been told by a prominent Christian minister not to be so self-centered!

//Continued