Snake Handling

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Lots of emotional upheaval for many reasons. The diagnosis of a serious illness for a close family member took some wind out of my sails. The prognosis is good, all things considered, and for that I am grateful. It is still a big mental and emotional adjustment to make, but I know we have all we need to get through it.

The saga of the ex-BF continued in a warped, dysfunctional, and painful manner, but as noted in my previous posts, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, so whatever consequences I have suffered have been because of my own choices.

Given how the whole thing has ultimately ended, I really had to give a lot of thought to what actually did happen and why because I’m not sure yet that it ended well at all. I know the ex doesn’t think it ended well. At the moment he’s one very sad and angry man, and by now has probably convinced himself that all of my actions were done for no other reason than to hurt and disrupt him.

Nothing could be further from the truth although I will acknowledge that he did, in fact, get hurt. It was not intentional any more than all the hurt caused to me and the others involved. There were a lot of bad choices being made on all sides and choices - whether bad or good - carry consequences. Sometimes you can see what those consequences will be and avoid the ones that are painful. Other times, you do the best you can with what you know and deal with the outcome.

If I tried to outline the details of the whole situation, I’d be getting calls from Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer asking me to come on the show. It was that bad.

By Sunday, I was almost completely overwhelmed by this toxic cesspool of dysfunctional behavior - and believe me, I am including myself in that description - and I went to Mass with a mind and heart positively boiling over with sadness, pain, and anger.

The first reading for Sunday was from an obscure section of the Book of Numbers and involved a story of cranky Israelites getting the smackdown from God in the form of serpents who bite. When the Israelites finally apologized for being so cranky and ungrateful, the cure for those who had been bitten by the serpents was to look upon a bronze serpent erected by Moses. Anyone who gazed directly at the bronze serpent would be healed of their bites. (I love Old Testament stories, don't you?)

And Father Andrew, who is an outstanding homilist, began his homily by saying, “The May 2005 issue of National Geographic Magazine cover story is ‘Poison – 12 Toxic Tales’. In the article the author reminds or teaches us that poison is a stealth killer effective in very small amounts. It can lead to death. But it’s also about life. What can kill, can cure.”

Toxicity is apparently the theme of the month.

Father Andrew went on to explain that in order to develop a better snake anti-venom, technicians inject a small amount of the venom into a chicken and then harvest the protein from their eggs to make the anti-venom. “The venom of serpents is a toxin, and that same venom has the potential to become the prescription that heals.”

This same concept (according to Fr. Andrew) is also be applicable to humanity. When you engage in a truthful examination of self and in a truthful dialog with others, you experience, consciously or not, the “truth of the snake”.

“If it bit you, whatever “it” may be, if it’s still biting you, if its teeth are still in your arm, or in your heart, or in your head, and you refuse to look at it, to pay concentrated and long attention to it, it will kill you or at least paralyze you for life.”

My ex is the snake that bit me and for the year that we were apart, I refused to look, concentrate, or pay any attention to the bite that was slowly paralyzing me in my life.

It wasn’t until I found out the situation he was falling into with the Toxic One that I had any inkling that it was time to pay attention to what bit me. According to Father Andrew there is a theological term for this - “Aufheben” - “auf” meaning “up”, “Heben” meaning “heave”. Upheaval.

I can’t even say it was a conscious thought. I never said to myself, “You know, maybe it’s time I finally dealt with this because a year later my life is still being paralyzed by this relationship that I ended.” That thought never entered my mind. It wasn’t about me. It was about my ex and his snakes. It was about the toxin entering his life.

Or so I thought.

The homily went on - “God disrupts our lives….. Jesus who went before us and taught us how to look around beyond our present comforts, the destruction of our little idols such as job success, advanced placement children, unchallenging religious life, smug status, you fill in the blanks. God changes us in, and through, one another’s care as we accompany those who are in special times in their lives where looking at the snake is painful, but necessary.

God makes a new creation as we are given the grace to keep our eyes steadfastly on what is biting us perhaps only after days, or weeks, or months, or many years of unforgiveness. God is creating wounded, but healed healers out of us."

And that is exactly how I saw myself - a wounded, but healed healer available to help my ex keep his eyes steadfastly on what was biting him. I was hopeful - no, certain - that if I could convince him to keep his focus on the truths about himself and about the situation he was in, then he would choose a wiser path.

And perhaps I did do that for him to a certain extent. Perhaps I did it for someone else in his life who is struggling to come to terms with her own “snakes”. I certainly hope there was, or will be, some benefit derived from all that transpired although I can't control how anyone else chooses to interpret my actions. Nor can I control what choices people will make even when confronted with what appears to be an obvious truth about themselves or their life.

But it was when I heard this next part that I realized how much this was also about the upheaval that I needed in my own life:

"They were worshiping something that in the past had been a good and had now become a god. A blessing had become an idol. So God created an upheaval. Our God will not be displaced. One way or another, even yesterday’s blessings will bite us and we will need to look at them long and hard before we will be healed and move on to the next step in the journey."

“Paying attention to what is biting us”, Andrew concluded, “will reveal the idols that need to be smashed….”

Whether it’s someone who hurt us in the past, or something that caused us pain or sorrow, or something that is causing us to be fearful, or even something that was originally a great good, when it consumes our thoughts and drives our actions in spite of, and above, everything else, that is when it becomes an “idol” in our lives. We become bound to it rather than being bound to God.

My “idol” was the dream of finally having the relationship I always wanted with the man I wanted to have it with, even though he had repeatedly demonstrated that it was never going to be. My desire for it was so strong that I became distracted from everything else and allowed it to paralyze my life even when he wasn't there. It wasn’t until I went through the painful process of steadfastly and truthfully looking at him, and at myself, that I could finally smash that idol.

He was, and still is, a man I love. But the snake bite has been healed, the idolized and idealized relationship is gone for good, and my life is no longer paralyzed. Amen.