On Being Down While Up

Violent self-hatred characterizes my days recently.

Being up on a ladder triggered this bout of feeling down.

Yes, I’ve spent the past few days on top of a ten-foot ladder — until my fat ass broke the ladder and I had to spend hours repairing the damn thing so I could climb it again. Not only that, but over the weekend we got to make three trips to the hardware store because nothing in this damn house fits.

But, didn’t we have a repairman in for two days last week?

Yes. And he did everything we asked.

But I saw a minor adjustment that needed to be made and I’d watched him do such tasks in less than 30 minutes, so naturally I tried to do the same thing he did.

And I did — for ten hours Saturday till I broke my ladder and it got too dark to see how to work any longer, then I spent another four hours on top of the ladder Sunday afternoon and I still was not able to make the repairs.

I’ll have to try again today.

What a damn, incompetent, useless piece of shit I am.

What an utter klutz!

Any damn fool ought to be able to fix a simple light fixture but I’m too useless and stupid to even unscrew one blub.

I feel so mad at me, so disgusted, so angry at myself.

No, this is not a case of simple humorous self-depreciation in my writing that I use as a self-defense tactic, not my country-bumpkin, dumb blond act which masks pride. This is a real visceral loathing at my own incompetence.

Really, I expected so much more of me.

And not only is this related to my immediate circumstance, but as I fumble atop that ladder, my mind dredges up thousands of stupid, foolish, inane actions, words and mistakes from my whole life and gives me an instant replay of remorse.

And this is just the first week of home repairs.

Weeks and weeks and weeks of this crap stretches interminably into my future.

And the hell of it is that when all this home repair stuff is done, we’ll live in exactly the same box with roof and floors and walls that we’ve lived in all along.

The only Scripture that I hang onto at the moment is a phrase from the epistles that we are “Accepted in the Beloved”. That it is the mercy of Christ that makes me acceptable to God not my own well-rounded personality and virtue.

I’ve noticed both from reading biographies and from personal observation that often when elderly Christians get close to the finish line something minor happens that kicks the props out from under them, that torpedos their beliefs, that reduces the person to despair and tempts them to sourness. This event strips away everything leaving only a bare-bones faith — if that.

Jesus leaves us nothing, absolutely nothing, but Himself.

It’s kind of a final exam before graduation.

If my recent experiences are this kind of test, then I’m failing miserably.

Being on top of a ten-foot ladder does not lift me ten feet closer to Heaven.

Quite the opposite in fact, I’m never more down than when I’m up there.

Seeing that I was so down while I was atop that ladder, to cheer me up Ginny bought me a dozen jelly donuts on one of her trips to the hardware store.

I don’t know what preachers might make of it, but I felt closer to God eating a jelly donut than I did while up on top of a ten-foot ladder.