a surrender - 73

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter ten, "in this moment") 

So we said we’d be willing to help out through the end of this growing season, if they allowed us to continue as volunteers a little longer. That way they would have time to find replacements for us. But where we would go and what we would do next wasn’t easy to see.

I’d like to say that I handled it well. But, from what I remember of the weeks that followed, I don’t think I did. It felt like I was flailing around in the dark. I tried to arrange a simple and easy solution for us with friends from church, but that fell through, leaving me stunned, confused, and depressed. And overwhelmed by the many interconnected needs of all the people involved now. Not just the three of us, but Heather’s parents and my mother too. And I felt like I had nothing to offer, no way to help any of them. More than once I recalled a line from a W. H. Auden poem:

The Pilgrim Way 

has led to the Abyss

It felt like I couldn’t turn back, but it also seemed that there was no way forward.

This continued for many anguished weeks. And a big part of the anguish was that it seemed like this crisis was my fault. I was the one who felt most strongly that we needed to leave the farm now. And it was my choices that had left me without money or property at this time in my life, when usually people are most able to support their children and their aging parents. Day after day, the pressure bore down on me. It got so heavy that there were moments when I felt I couldn’t trust my own judgment any more, or my own intentions. I desperately wanted to believe that God was preparing something, something good. But I felt excluded and alone, with nowhere else to turn, trembling in the dark.

Continued...