Corpse Class and Anxiety Antics

Last night, I had a dream in which a giant fissure opened up in the ground behind our house. There had been a series of terrible earthquakes and/or storms that gobbled up whole swaths of land, and we knew it was approaching. So we had packed up the car to leave town, trying to get ahead of the destruction, but we weren't fast enough.

The ground swelled, and cracked open. Into the deep fell our sweet little dog (Pepper). Our car also fell in, along with its contents: our kids' lovies, our laptop computers and cellphones, and emergency clothes and supplies.

After the storm passed, the police came to secure our house, saying it was unsafe and we couldn't enter for two weeks. I did manage to sneak around them in order to grab some of my medicine, noticing that the house swayed a bit with my movement. I also grabbed bathing suits out of the washer for all four of us, because somehow it was now a beautiful day out and we were going swimming.

Then one of my tooth fillings fell out, and I couldn't call the dentist because my phone had fallen into the pit. Even without a phone, I somehow received word from my doctor that my test results from a routine exam were questionable for cervical cancer.

This is all one dream. It doesn't take a master interpreter to see the layers of anxiety here. And if you know me at all, you know that I am no stranger to anxiety, either day or night. I've long been dreaming about my teeth falling out, and recently have been dreaming that my husband dies, or that we get divorced.

This week I felt a painful, extended spike of anxiety, for the first time in months. It first became obvious in my antics at Raleigh-Durham Airport (RDU) this week, captured here in text monologue:

I chose to share this story publicly precisely because it was embarrassing. Franciscan friar Richard Rohr says, in a New Yorker piece by Eliza Griswold: “I pray for one humiliation a day,” he told me. “It doesn’t have to be major.”

It's disturbingly easy for me to get trapped in the machinations of my false self, referred to as "parts" in Internal Family Systems theory. (I've written a lot about my adventures with this type of therapy, start here if you're interested). My ambitious part really believes in its own intelligence, and feels the need to prove it by talking a bit too often in class. I was clearly due for some humiliation this week, and honestly it feels good to be reminded of my own weakness and absurdity!

But these dreams, y'all. They manifest a deeper existential anxiety, a fear of everything falling away. My terror at the knowledge that eventually, I will lose everyone and everything that I love, including my own body. 

My ambitious part (ego) thinks I am very cool with death. As a chaplain-in-training I work with people who are sick and dying. When serving as the on call chaplain overnight at the hospital, I am regularly paged to a room where someone has just died. Sometimes I pray and wait with a family as life support is withdrawn. Every week, I co-lead a Grief & Spirituality group where we hear stories of traumatic, complicated deaths, and the gaping fissures they leave in the lives of their loved ones.

And did I mention that I'm taking a (fabulous) class this semester called Practical Theology of the Corpse? So I am immersed in grief, dying and death. That is literally the title of one of the books on my desk. Other titles include: "This Republic of Suffering" and "Death in the New World." 

Honestly, I love all of this learning. I've been bragging to my friends about my corpse class, because that's the kind of weird you can be in seminary. I chose to immerse myself in this material, and these experiences, and it is fascinating and profound.

And yet, at night I dream of chasms opening up and swallowing parts of my life.

My current clinical educator says that it is impossible to witness so much suffering and not be affected. My RDU antics and dreams this week suggest that I am, indeed, affected. Still, from where I sit now, I can't imagine being or doing anything else with my precious time on earth. I would not trade one experience of being called to a bedside to hear stories of a departed loved one. I cherish the moments when I unexpectedly have "church" with a stranger in an examining room, washed with chills from the presence of the holy. 

Ten years ago, I could not have imagined this particular life, the profound joy I would experience amidst all the suffering. Even with the emotional drain, the ridiculous overnights, and the anxiety dreams... this is my path. And I love it.