Of Arrows and Dragons

I just don't feel like I have time for blogging anymore. I probably do, but the second job often leaves me wanting to use Mondays and Wednesdays to recoop. On top of that, I've had company or traveled every weekend since September 11th. I've got something planned every weekend between now and the weekend AFTER Thanksgiving. I'm a social butterfly, but that's a lot even for me.

I've got to process this since it's late and the people I call to help me process are likely all in bed. I should be, too, but I'll just toss and turn. So I guess this means this is mostly for myself, and I'm letting everyone participate vicariously.

I'm feeling pretty anxious about my second job as an online writing tutor. I talked about in this post. I'm doing well with the things I thought would be hard (the 30 minute average return time for essays we review), which is wonderful. The unknown in this situation is how the people in charge view my questions via email. I've had some administrative issues come up that I needed to find out how to handle. (There's lots of details to this job and this process, so I'll spare you.) The company has a pretty extensive FAQ section, which I read, but that doesn't always answer my questions. I end up writing an email about it, and the responses I've gotten have been either pretty short (sometimes abrupt) or have provided a response that is just vague enough that I don't know how to interpret.

This is really triggering my "I shouldn't need to ask for help" button. Do you have a button like that? My buttons include (but are not limited to) "I'm too much," "I need to pull my weight at work," "I'm annoying," and "I overanalyze everything." When a situation arises that triggers any of these, I feel embarrassed and ashamed. In this case, because the responses I get are short in length and aren't always clear, I end up feeling the initial sense of being too naive to figure it out on my own AND a sense of frustration that asking for help didn't help.

Everyone reading this has had a job at one point in life. You know how, with a new job, you don't know how everything works yet, so you have to depend on your trainer a fair amount until you get the hang of things? And you feel bad at some point because you've decided you should have it all figured out by now? Well, imagine if you couldn't see your trainer's face, hear her voice, or even watch her body language as she interacted with you. How much more insecure would you be when you needed help?

That's how I feel now when I ask questions. And it's forcing me to face some fears: Are they getting sick of me? Am I going to lose this job? Am I the only one with questions? Why don't they acknowledge it when I apologize for mistakes - are they mad at me for making them, or do they think the mistake is no big deal? Why don't I get it?

I don't like this feeling. It's discouraging and anxiety-producing. I really like this job, and I'm getting better at it all the time (not to sound cocky, but I've always been a good editor. I wasn't worried about that. I was concerned about editing within a time limit and editing according to a specific style. I'm getting those down more and more each time I work a shift). I just to know that my questions aren't too much. I want to know that I'M not too much.

And, at the end of the day, I think that's where this anxiety and discouragement comes from. Satan is a master archer. He launches arrows at me all day long. He started launching "too much" at me earlier today, and I'm already worn out.

Because I had time on my hands, I made a picture of the arrows he carries with him, ever-ready to cripple me.

These are the issues satan most uses to attack me, to cause me to be end up like the wild buffalo I saw on a show on the Discovery Channel last night. Desperate for a meal, a kimodo dragon (which I always thought was peaceful... go figure) bit the wild buffalo on the leg twice. Didn't do much harm. The buffalo literally jogged away. Crisis averted, right?

Wrong. Turns out the kimodo dragon has a pretty potent venom it secretes in situations just like this one. It's designed to be able to bring down prey much larger than itself.

Other kimodo dragons were drawn to the buffalo, too. They followed it for three weeks, patiently waiting while the buffalo slowly died. They went everywhere the buffalo went. The venom keeps the blood from coagulating, so the buffalo slowly bleeds out. The wound can't heal. And the buffalo experiences a lot of pain - but not so much that it immediately knows it's in danger.

Eventually, the buffalo returns to the one of the last mudholes before the dry season completely drains it. This was the site of the attack, ironically enough. It lays down in the mud, kimodo dragons surrounding it, occasionally nipping at it. The buffalo, toward the end, barely raises its head.

It died in the night, and the next morning, the camera crew showed dozens of kimodo dragons feasting on its carcass.

The arrows satan launches at me are like the kimodo dragons. One seems rather innocuous and very conquerable. It's not even that intimidating. I can generally see it coming, and I never expect it to do much damage. But underestimating it is often the beginning of the downfall.

In this case - in the case of my second job - satan sends "too much" flying in my direction. The arrow grazes me. It happens so quickly and so nearly-painlessly that I barely notice it. But it does connect. I go on about my day, not taking the time to heal what looks like, essentially, a surface wound.

Slowly, however, the surface wound starts to ache. It festers, and blood continues to, very slowly, seep out. When I'm distracted, trying to remember how the wound got there, another arrow, this one a bit bigger, hurtles threw space and makes more significant contact. I definitely notice the pain of that one, called "expectations." It's more annoying, more noticeable, but I convince myself it's done little damage. Besides, "fear" almost always is just seconds behind "expectations," so I don't have time to tend to the damage done by "expectations" properly, even if I wanted to (which I don't. I don't want to see how ugly the wound is, so I just keep my eyes focused ahead). I escape the onslaught relatively unscathed.

But I'm wounded, and that relentless archer stalks me everywhere I go. When I'm not looking - when I'm busy staring at my wounds or when I'm busy convincing myself they aren't there - another one sinks its ragged point deep into my skin. This one really, really hurts - it's the one that always hurts the most. "Relationship with God" is buried so deeply that I can't pull it out. I decide that I just have to keep going. I don't bother to stop and ask for help. There are lots of others around me, but I keep trudging on.

I can't go on forever, though. I lose more and more steam. I stop for longer periods of time. I get separated from the pack. I wander around aimlessly, looking for shelter. I'm too distracted by the pain to notice that I have passed a rocky outcropping that's too concealed for the archer to find me, too high up for his arrows to reach. I feel more anxious as arrows head in my direction every few moments. I can't dodge even half of them, so I stop trying to dodge any.

Days or weeks later, I sit down in the middle of the open field. I have no protection, and I know it. I lift my head every once in a while when an arrow connects with my tender flesh, but I just close my eyes and imagine I'm someplace else. I hear the crunch of the dry grass as the archer stalks toward me, slowly. I hear the wood of the bow creak and the string sing as he pulls it taut. I resign myself for the final kill shot that will finish me any second.

This little, seemingly-insignificant, anxiety about this job is like the first arrow. It's so small - so minor and so petty - that I feel almost silly stopping to bandage it with Truth. It's quite insignificant, really, and I think satan knows that. He knows that if he starts releasing the smaller arrows at me, I'll feel kind of pathetic if I cry out to God and ask for protection from them. He uses that faulty reasoning to his advantage. He habituates me to the arrows - in other words, he gets me used to them, and this allows him to keep increasing their size, gradually pulling the biggest and deadliest arrows from their case. They become so big that I feel guilty for not asking for help sooner. I start judging myself for getting myself in this situation, and I wander around, looking for help. Because I don't look up, though, I miss the rocky outcropping. I miss that the Father is there and ready to hide me, to shelter me, to give me rest and comfort and healing. By the time I remember that the Lord is near, I'm so wounded that I resign myself to a needless defeat.

So that's what I'm working on tonight. Recognizing the arrows and asking for help, no matter how big or small they are. Keeping my gaze upward rather than down on my feet, expecting them to get me to safety on their own. Trying to see that, as small and harmless as it may feel, this arrow of "too much" is just the one that I need the Lord to shield me from today. It's just the one to write about in my blog, to announce to my friends and family that I'm struggling with. It's just the one to take time out of my life to heal and to recover from. It's never the one to hide or pretend it's not there; that, I've learned, is the first step in a long journey toward a slow death.

Are you hiding a struggle, trying to be strong, prolonging asking God for help? I hope not. I don't want any of us to be too proud or too ashamed to ask for help with a surface wound. The Lord specializes in being an ever-present help in trouble. He didn't say an ever-present help in really big trouble. Just trouble. So I hope we both take advantage of His broad definition of trouble tonight. It's hard for me to do so, which is probably the best indication that I most need to. And you?