Journal Entry 16: Arrows Trying to Break Me
Jesus, if you’re not in it, I don’t want it.
Journal Entry 16: Arrows Trying to Break Me
Went several years back to an old book, The Sacred Romance, by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis. The book is over 15 years old now, but it still hits home like a truck crossing into your lane with no warning. I have the book buried in my collection somewhere in one of my tubs of books my wife hides from me claiming to be “organizing.” I had a free credit on Audible, so I just got it on there to listen. The part about arrows brought me face to face with shadows I’d been ignoring to the best of my abilities.
What’s a hard question for me to go to isn’t hard for me to point out at all, it’s the arrows. What are my arrows, and are they still stuck inside of me? The question scares me. I know my childhood was crazy and my teen years were no better. I dare say my adult years have been a slow gain of minimal traction towards Jesus; because, I am damaged.
Even now I’m tempted to run this on not getting to the point.
What are my arrows? What damaged me? What is still doing damage to me?
Arrow - Everything fails eventually. Marriages fail. My parents divorced from each other several times; before, finally coming to love each other under Jesus. Mom and dad came together, after decades of screwing it up, only for my mom to die of cancer in a swift 6 months.
I can still see her smile, big and proud, that she could help me out when I needed it. My washer had died, and I didn’t know it, but my mom bought me a brand new washer and dryer set. She put herself in credit card debt to do it. Being able to help me meant that much to her. (Short History Dump: We had a nightmare of a history that didn’t clear up until I was in my early twenties. I got saved at 19 and then she got saved a couple years later. It was only then we were able to truly start forming a real mother and son bond, if not a great one.)
My wife and I named our first daughter together, now 3, Arena, my mother’s middle name. That made mom almost cry several times. She would not get to see Arena. Life through my mother had shown me hardship in multiple ways. Love just didn’t seem to work with her or in her life, and I don’t know why.
Every relationship around me failed. My parents, failed. My sister, brothers, and their spouses, failed. My friends, and myself included, failed out of relationships with a spring loaded trap to help us out. My first marriage was a joke, a horrible, life splitting, joke that surely launched arrows into our kids due to their mom and dad’s failures.
Failure to me is a sunset away. If I hold on as long as I can, pray and beg for help, I still expect the sun to set on whatever is good in my life. I expect failure to come. This is an arrow life has stuck deep into my flesh with a poison tip that has cursed my thoughts for years.
I am here writing this with a business that isn’t doing anything but costing me money. My writing career is a hobby I enjoy, but it has paid me nothing and helped . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s helped anyone. If I write for pennies, that’s fine. I can live with that, if my writing helps others. I don’t know if it’s even doing that. They seem like failures.
I’ve been married for 4 years to my wife, Rainy. I love this woman more than I can put words to. She’s, I jokingly tell her, my Disney princess turned real. She’s a fairytale to me. The nightmare is my arrow. Though I try to shut the thought down, quiet the wicked voice, part of me expects us to fail. My life has taught me that failure is what comes. Like the wind, like the sunset of a day too good to be true, failure comes.
Arrow - I expect to be left alone. Strangely enough my dad taught me this one late in life. When I was but a boy and my parents were getting their first divorce my dad left the house. He stopped on his way out, suitcase in hand, and knelt down to my level. He told me “son, I’m not leaving you. I will be back for you tomorrow.” Then he walked out. My mother in tears and rage went to her bedroom. My dad went out the backdoor and drove away. I, I think I was nine or ten, maybe, as I stood there in the kitchen more confused than anything. My parents argued A LOT. This was nothing new to me, but actual separating was new.
My dad held to his word though, he came back the next day. My mom packed up and left. For a short while, several months at best, we had no mother in the house. It would be years and years later before my mother and I would ever be anything close to a relationship that was decent, so I didn’t care that she was gone. Dad worked all day, I went to school, and that was that. Mom would eventually come back into our lives. The cycle would repeat a few more times, but eventually I was old enough to get out of the house and make my own horrible marriage.
The lesson about being alone came in stages. My former wife left me as a single father of five kids. That was something else all together. I’ve mentioned this story in previous writings if you’re interested, but I won’t hash it up here. Point is, I was left alone to care for five children; while, their mother threw herself into the night life.
The next stage was the loss of my mother. We were never super close, but we had mended old wounds and found a decent relationship under Christ together. I didn’t even know she was sick, until suddenly, she was skin and bones on her bed dying at my father’s house under hospice care. If there is a gift cancer can give to a dying body, I believe it is swiftness.
My two oldest and now the third oldest is teaching me a lesson all parents of older kids probably go through. Children, well, they grow up and seek to adventure out into the world. I knew this was coming, of course. Still, after giving everything I had to try and raise my children (far from perfect parenting for sure), they just leave. They’re supposed to, but it still feels like a piece of you left with them.
The cherry grenade on top that plants the arrow that I am alone is my dad’s arrow. My dad gave everything he had to my older brothers, to their kids, and to at least a couple kids I know that he took in to care for until the parents came back for them. When I say he gave all he had, I mean it. My dad sacrificed thousands, gave up rooms in his own home, sacrificed credit, his name, and two of the most important in my book, his time and heart. Each time my dad was repaid with either spiteful words only wanting more or spiteful behavior that broke up his home. I don’t blame my dad, but I wasn’t one of those mentioned above.
My dad came by to see me for the first time in a while. I loved seeing him and having time together. But he said something that clued me in to my dad’s arrow. I told him I was thinking of moving to the mountains (still want to.) He told me to go for it. I told him I was looking for land, so I might leave each of my kids a safe place to come back to, to call theirs. Nothing big, an acre, they could have a little home on to vacation to or run to if the world’s demands broke their bank accounts. A safe place, basically.
My dad, without hesitation told me “Don’t worry about leaving your kids something. They won’t ever appreciate it.” I countered his words, and he replied, “I have three sons, and you’re the only one that turned out any good.” He kind of half laughed at his own words. “And you don’t even need me.”
“I need your time, old man.” I meant it. Jesus, thank you Jesus, Jesus has taken care of me and this family in every hardship that has struck us. If money was short, something came up for me to work and earn just that needed amount. Sometimes I’d get a gift from an unexpected person that would rescue our family. Jesus has had us every time. So, I wasn’t the son that called dad for money, I never moved back in while my brothers did it a few times. I am not bragging. Jesus is the one that kept this family’s head above water, not me. But to my dad, not asking for money or things, was weird to him, I guess.
I did ask him for his time. I wanted my dad around. I wanted my kids to know their grandfather. He shook his head at me, gave me a hug, and told me he wasn’t going to make the drive down anymore. It was bad on his nerves. I haven’t seen him sense, and I only hear from him when I call/text each week to check in. I wanted my dad. The dad that stopped in the kitchen in a storm of rage to calm himself and tell me he wasn’t leaving me that he was coming back for me. That dad was old now, bitter with the poison of his own arrows, and had decided his kids weren’t worth it anymore. I was alone.
Arrow - Everything fails eventually.
Arrow - I expect to be left alone.
These are two of my many arrows. I started to go further with the arrows but I decided to stop. Going over these arrows is unpleasant to me; though, I’ll admit it is healthier to know them. I’ll simply stick with these two for tonight. What I’m also going to stick to is the truth of such arrows. Part of me feels like I need to make a list or at least an idea of how to pull such arrows out and be free of them. If there is such a quick technique I don’t know of it.
Arrows that we find by the time they’ve settled in and spread their poison are difficult to deal with. They are part of us, bone grown around them, and now help shape us. The benefit of finding them, as John and Brent tell us in The Sacred Romance, is that we can see them now, know them, and better deal with them.
I know in my heart that not everything fails. I know that my God, Jesus Christ, didn’t fail. I know that I am loved and that love, God’s love, will not fail or even weaken the tiniest amount. When doubts and darkness begin to spread their poison in me I know it’s the arrow and the enemy. God will use hard times and difficult situations to help me grow and know him and rely on him more, but he will never fail me or seek to poison me with wicked thoughts. This is the knowledge you gain by recognizing the arrows in your own life.
Every marriage I know has not failed. I can more easily point out the relationships that have failed, but there are several in my life that are still running with living vines and producing good fruit. My immediate life is no good example of this, but some work friends are, my adopted “much older sister” is a good example, and two former bosses who have shown me compassion also have marriages that have reached over the 40yr mark. Not everything fails, not everyone is going to leave me, and I am not alone but in a world at war with each of us suffering wounds.
My earthly dad has been wounded and seems to of decided to retreat to his aging siblings in the country and live out his days there. My dad is also one of my biggest heroes. I am a father that doesn’t leave his kids, because my dad came back for me and was there for me the best he knew how. I understand hard work and how to get up after you fall thanks in a large part to my dad. Yes, he’s stepping away, he’s suffering his own wounds, but he’s still one of the best men I know. I can’t expect anyone, even my dad, to be perfect and unwavering in his conviction to rescue and love me. But God does, God is unwavering and constantly fighting for me and loving me. Our heavenly father has fought for us sense we fell thousands of years ago.
Jesus Christ, he’s the champion that overcomes the evil and rescues us from the pits. Arrows wound us, and I don’t know any secret technique to fully be rid of them, but I know Jesus is a warrior who tramples over our enemies to save us. To better see, to better know, open your eyes to your own arrows and then ask God to help you fight them.
I recommend reading The Sacred Romance by John and Brent. These two have done an amazing job in this book, and my article is only a few pages of personal experience where their book is a survival guide.