God returned to me last night. Thank God. This was the most awful thing I've ever experienced--the loss of him. It was like a foretaste of Hell.

I understand now unbelief. There is just no way to know, no way to believe, without that light that he brings--that prevenient grace which he gives us, which enables us to have faith. Faith is a gift. Without that grace, that light, that presence, we're left only with reason, and reason cannot reach God or his supernatural works in our lives by itself. It can reach the idea or concept of God--that he must and does exist, that he made the world, that we are going back to him in the end. But it cannot reach him as he really is, in the things which can only be known by revelation and experience. Including his supernatural leading and working in our lives--it just doesn't make any sense without that light. The best reason alone can come up with is a sort of deism; perhaps a theologically correct Christian deism, if one accepts doctrines intellectually, but practical life is devoid of God--one is on one's own, except perhaps sending up prayers to the detached God as a sort of luck charm, to hope things go your way.

But now his light has returned to me, and I am once again able to believe fully. I don't know if it's over, or if this is just a break, or a stage. I sincerely hope the former. I do NOT want to go back there.

"There was a flowing in upon me, from the barren years beyond, a dejection such as I had never conceived. It was not at all like the agonies I had endured before and have endured since. I did not weep or wring my hands. I was like water put into a bottle and left in a cellar: utterly motionless, never to be drunk, poured out, spilled, or shaken. The days were endless. The very shadows seemed nailed to the ground as if the sun no longer moved."

-- C.S. Lewis, Till we have Faces

Again, from the grief book. (It's set up as a devotional--short daily readings and quotes from scripture for reflection):

"Are you living in a bad dream? Is every step and every move you make automatic and devoid of emotion? Do you feel suspended in time and unable or unwilling to start up again?"

Yes, yes, and yes. This was exactly it. It wasn't conscious, active grieving; it was a state that came on me unawares, and that I didn't even recognize that I was in until much later--just recently, in fact. 

The book goes on to say that this is "denial" and perfectly normal. And that it is actually physiological, not just psychological.

I only wish I'd had this book a year and a half ago. It could have saved me a lot of pain and suffering; or at least helped me through it. It might have saved my relationship.

Of course, what I wrote last isn't really what I believe. It's just how I feel--but feelings aren't truth. That's not to say that they're not true, they're just not the ultimate determiner of what is really True.

From my grief book, this morning: 

"When you are in shock and at that moment you feel powerless to cope and unable to think straight, understand that you don't have to. Yet because of this, it is wise not to make any major changes in your life or decide on any important issues until your shock has subsided.

God will gently lead to safety those who consciously turn to Him and are dependent on His guidance."

This is exactly the issue I've been wrestling with: How could God allow everything in my life to go so wrong, allow me to make all these poor decisions, when he knew I was in no state to handle my own life? I did have to make major life changes and decide on very important issues while I was in that state. And I seem to have royally screwed it all up. It's like he let me drive my life while I was intoxicated, and then left me to deal with the consequences.

So part of me looks at that this morning and feels comforted: God is in control, he's been looking out for me, I'm where he wants me to be, his good for my life is coming. "A man's heart plans his way but the Lord directs his steps." But the other part of me, the completely human part, finds that impossible to believe anymore.

The problem is, his presence is gone. That's what I've always relied on. That was my safe place, my guiding principle, my decision-making process. At least, it has been since I really got serious about following him and started on that path, back in my 30s.

But when you're making decisions based in the spirit, or in the Spirit, many of them don't make any sense in the natural. So it's been for me, as you know all too well. And what's kept me holding on is that Presence; that Power; that Peace. My human mind looks at what I'm doing and starts to panic, and then I close my eyes and find my Center, and it says, "Peace. I am with you. Follow Me. Trust in Me." It is what brought me alive through all my perils of both body and soul. It's what has kept me sane.

And it's what I've based my whole life upon for the last decade or so. Every major decision I've made, and a large portion of the minor ones, have been made in the Spirit, from that spiritual perspective, based on my best effort to hear and obey his voice. You know this; about all my dreams, visions, visitations, words, and the leadings of his voice in my heart.

All this is very spiritual and mystical. To the rational, natural, human-only mind, it's all twaddle and nonsense. I know this. But when that Presence is with you, you know that it's not. Your faith is not in the things themselves, or in your own perception, but in that Presence. It orients you to Rightness, to Truth, but truth beyond what can otherwise be known. It's like, in Lewis's Space Trilogy, when the Eldila, the angelic archons who rule the planets, visit the world, they seem to be crooked, not in alignment with the earth. But then one realizes that it is the earth that is out of alignment and they that are straight. That's what that Presence does.

But now that he has withdrawn it from me, I can no longer sense that orientation, and am left only with my terrestrial frame of reference. And it all seems stupid, ridiculous, and insane to me. And from that perspective, it seems perfectly obvious that I've made the biggest mistake of my life and blown my one and only chance at happiness. 

So, I know some people, who don't believe in "all that mystical nonsense," unbelievers, and the McPhees of the world, and those whose faith is weak or only theoretical, will say that this is just me coming to my senses, coming back to reality. But I know, and anyone who's really experienced His Presence--anyone who's actually seen the Eldila--knows that that Presence is the truth, and it's our "reality" which is skewed. Only I can't sense it anymore, so am left to believe it by a sheer act of will. And my will is not always strong enough.

The more I think about this, the more angry it makes me. 

I have always, through everything I've been through, always been very careful to try and not to complain against God. I suffered loss after loss, tragedy after tragedy, heartbreak after heartbreak, and I always said, "God is Just. God is Good. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." When I got the news that my daughter had died, I fell to my knees and praised him, and surrendered it all, surrendered her, to him. But now I have finally reached that place which Job reached at the end of his trial: I will pour out my complaint before the Lord.

I suffered for all those years, holding on for his answer, believing that he would answer, believing that good was coming. But when it did come, I wasn't able to immediately take hold of it, because it came in a different form than I had been expecting. But I recognized that that might be the case, and I opened myself up to it, only asking that he would make it clear to me that this in fact was his answer, and not something that would take me on a path away from his plan. That's all I asked--just help me to see if this is it. And change my heart: incline it toward her like you did the other before.

I didn't get that answer--either yes, this is it, or no, it is not, so I said, Well, I will embrace this and walk this path he has laid before me. I will embrace this good, only holding off on making it final and irreversible until I have more clarity. I did my best, and it was going very well, and I was moving in that direction. But then I was knocked into a waking coma, and lost the ability to function. 

When I look back now on the last year and a half, it is as if I have been asleep; walking in a dream, detached from reality. Or under the influence of some powerful drug--perceptions skewed, senses clouded, judgment altered. And I am just now waking up. And so, just now that I am waking up, I finally have that clarity that I asked for--but it came too late. 

I look back on that time, when I first met her, those sweet, wonderful months we shared, and how I was then...active, hopeful, passionate, determined, decisive, even joyful; and then compare it to how I was in the months after she came back, after Adina, it's like the difference between life and death. How was I supposed to be able to find my way in a new relationship in that state? 

Yes, I took too long. I hurt and offended her by not being able to choose her immediately and completely. But how was I supposed to, when I was in a state of shock? How was I supposed to be able to see clearly through all that darkness? How was I supposed to be able to make the right choices, when I couldn't think straight? How was I supposed to know which way is up or down in a universe where gravity doesn't work anymore? How was I supposed to sort my heart out when it was shattered into a billion pieces?

The whole thing--selling the house, going on the road, finding a new place to live, all of that--was about making a change. About breaking out of the pit I'd been trapped in for so long. And I was positive about it. Especially after I met her. I began to come alive again. And I had just started to wake up; just started to take my first faltering steps, and BLAM, I'm knocked flat on my ass again. 

I know I was nothing when we were traveling. I know I was nowhere. I know it felt like I was dead. That's only because I was. Only I didn't even realize it myself, just how bad it was. You can't see it when you're in it.

But the worst part is that now I am seeing it. Now I'm wishing more than anything else that I could go back and do that part again. But of course, I can't. But I really couldn't do any better at the time. I was just unable.

If I made a mistake, it was in trying too hard to seek God, to find his will, rather than just doing the thing that was in front of me. But isn't there some grace that will cover me when I'm trying my best to do what's right, even if I'm getting it wrong? 

Where is the justice in all this? Where is the good? Where is God?

I know this can't be true, but I feel like I trusted God, and he failed me. I feel like I gave up everything for him--everything, and got nothing in return. Like I gambled on God and lost. 

Other effects grief had on me:

I felt shaken, destabilized, insecure. Everything seemed uncertain, undependable, treacherous. Like nothing in the universe could be depended upon anymore to be as it always was. Like gravity had suddenly become intermittent and capricious, and I was lying face down on the ground holding onto the grass for dear life, terrified that I was going fall up into deep space. Instead of feeling like an exciting adventure, my living on the road suddenly felt dangerous, foolish, and precarious. I became preoccupied with where we were going to stay next, for how long, and how and when we were going to get there. I felt overwhelmed, and it became extremely hard to face or deal with anything beyond the basic functions of life. 

I found myself regretting the whole affair, longing for home, for the safe, the familiar. I wished I hadn't sold my house, both because of that feeling and from guilt--Adina had asked me, just before she died, if I could come get her and let her stay with me, but the house was already gone and I had no place to take her. I missed my home, I missed my poor kitty, I missed her. The whole thing was a huge change anyway (which was the idea), but I found myself unable to adjust to it adequately while in the state of grief. But I persevered, because I was doing it primarily to find God. So I became rather fixated on the journey itself--on reaching goals and destinations, rather than on the joy and fun of actually doing it.

I was a pathetic, weepy, angry mess. I was unable to cry or rage about Adina--it was too great, too intense. So I did about everything else. I leaked tears all the time, at all kinds of things. I was grumpier even than normal--things irritated and annoyed me way too easily. I didn't really talk about Adina that much--hardly at all. I couldn't. It just came out in other ways. And I took no real joy or interest in anything. 

All my old injuries and chronic ailments hurt more. A lot more. More than they had since before I'd had that pain-reducing treatment years ago and really begun to get in shape. Reading the articles cited below, now, I know why--grief causes inflammation. Inflammation is one of the chief causes of my pain anyway, so I was particularly vulnerable to this one. Plus, the junk food. Regular, processed, American food is chock full of inflammatory substances. Every time I eat it, I feel it. And it got out of hand. She has a serious sweet tooth, and I was constantly being tempted to indulge myself, and failing, mostly because I found temporary comfort in it. Both physiologically, because of the dopamine release and feelings of satisfaction, and psychologically, because eating "normal" food took me back to the past, to the days when Adina was young. 

I got curious after I wrote last night, and did some reading on the possibility of physiological symptoms of grief. My suspicions were right.

"Early grief was intensely physical for me. After the shock and adrenaline of the first weeks wore off, I went through a couple of months of extreme fatigue, with nausea, headaches, food aversion, mixed-up sleep cycles, dizziness, and sun sensitivity. It was extremely difficult to do anything. … If there’s one thing I want people to know about grief, it’s how awful it can make your body feel."

"What causes these physical symptoms? A range of studies reveal the powerful effects grief can have on the body. Grief increases inflammation, which can worsen health problems you already have and cause new ones. It batters the immune system, leaving you depleted and vulnerable to infection. The heartbreak of grief can increase blood pressure and the risk of blood clots. Intense grief can alter the heart muscle so much that it causes "broken heart syndrome," a form of heart disease with the same symptoms as a heart attack."

"Grief is hard work and, as noted above, takes a toll on our bodies. For numerous reasons, including poor eating habits and disrupted sleep patterns, grievers often experience low energy levels, feelings of fatigue, or weakness in their muscles." (emphasis added)

https://www.webmd.com/special-reports/grief-stages/20190711/how-grief-affects-your-body-and-mind

https://www.verywellmind.com/physical-symptoms-of-grief-4065135 

This is exactly the same thing I was describing last night.

I don't know why this never occurred to me before, that this was what was going on. Maybe because of the grief itself--lack of mental sharpness. Maybe if I'd realized it I could have found some way to manage it. Also, it was obviously responsible for the 40+ pounds I gained, which in turn exacerbated the physical symptoms. 

Also it ruined what should have been the trip of my lifetime. Here I am, going all over the country with a stunningly beautiful 28-year-old Italian model who loves me, passing by all these beautiful and amazing things, and I'm sitting in the damn trailer all day, staring at the computer, and stuffing myself with carbs because they're the only thing that makes me feel a little better. Remember before I left, I was talking about hiking, and fishing, and kayaking, and zip-lining? Took my hiking stuff. Didn't hike. Took my fishing stuff. Didn't fish. Didn't do any of it, except see a few national parks, and even that was sort of half-assed.

I'm seeing it more and more clearly now. What was I waiting for? For my heart to change. To be able to lay the old things to rest and embrace the new. To be able to look at her and say, "I choose you before all others." Because you can't marry a girl until you can honestly say that to her. Or at least, you really shouldn't. But my heart couldn't get there, because it was in a grief-induced coma. I couldn't move in any direction--emotional progress and change were impossible, because I was overwhelmed and paralyzed. It's not an accident, I think, that my feelings are finally sorting themselves out and becoming clear now, at the exact same time that I'm coming out of it.

It's getting hard to believe that things are ever going to get better. After all these years of misery, I finally have a chance at happiness. And it was working, at first. What was, it April or May when I met her? Yeah, it must have been May, because Easter is when I got confirmed, and it was after I quit going to church. So I got three months of love and joy for years and decades of misery and pain. But then, I lose my daughter, and everything goes to hell again, and I blow my one shot because I'm such a wreck. It doesn't seem quite fair, does it?

In another way, though, I find myself feeling more and more ready to start living again. More energy, more motivation. Feeling healthier. Not 100% yet, but better. I can't say exactly what it was, but after Adina I was actually physically affected. It's probably a physiological effect of grief, but I haven't looked it up or asked anyone about it. Absolutely no energy, I felt weak and very easily fatigued, and also no motivation or desire to do anything except try to keep myself distracted from waking to sleep. I was nothing; nowhere. It helped a lot when Carolina came to be with me, but as things deteriorated, it helped less and less. And my mood began to affect her, understandably, and contributed to the ending of things between us. But I couldn't help it. There was just nothing I could do about it. Nothing seemed to really matter. It was like all the joy and beauty and goodness had gone out of the world. I don't think anyone who hasn't been there could really understand it: I'd lost people before but a child is just different. I think a spouse would be a similar feeling, maybe worse if you're really in love.

But I'm starting to come out of it now. I've been able to stay on my diet for a couple of months now, since early January. Unfortunately, for some reason something in my psyche, now that I'm starting to feel alive again, is yearning to go back to where I was last happy--like this whole year and a half or so was an emotional lacuna. And that place of happiness was with her. I really do wish she'd had the patience to wait for me to work through my issues. She asked me for everything, but I needed to process my grief and my previously broken heart and life, and so I gave her all I could and asked her to give me time to get there. And I did get there, in the end. If she were here now, I'd be ready to give her all of it. But she didn't wait for it. I mean, let's leave the whole thing with God and guidance and the other girl and all that aside for right now: a year or two to discern if you want to marry someone is not a lot to ask. 

Anyway, enough of that. I'm not wasting any more of my life on women who don't love me. And that's what it really is, in the end, isn't it: I thought she did...she thought she did, but if she couldn't give me that much time--I wasn't asking for 5 years or 10, to jerk her around and string her along, then it wasn't the real thing. I have no doubt that her feelings were real, but there's more to love than feelings. Just a year or so, maybe two at most, to sort it all out and put my past to rest. But now she's part of that past too, and now that I've got the other things more or less sorted, now I've got to start working on her, and my once-again-newly-broken-heart.

 I've joined a grief support group at a local church.

This has been a bad winter. From Adina's death, when I had just set out on my trip, and only begun my relationship with Carolina, until I settled in to my new home here, I had been running sort of on autopilot; walking around in sort of a daze, or a state of shock. I had grieved, of course. I had cried. I had suffered. But the full weight of it had never come down on me. But then, as soon as I got most everything done in here, and settled down to just start living, it did. I came down like the weight of the universe, and I've been sitting here alone with it all winter.

It didn't help that Carolina started contacting me again. We had said our final goodbye last fall, before I moved in, and I had grieved for that too, because not only was she my former girlfriend and the only woman who ever showed me real love, but she had become my best friend, the one person in the universe who was always there, in my life. Even after we broke up, we talked pretty much every day. And so I wept again, to say goodbye to her, but I felt I had to let her go and for both of us to move on. But then, a couple of months later, she started writing me again. 

The bad thing about that is, I had just been thinking how much I missed her, and how nice it would be if she was here with me in my new house. And I had been praying, as I had been all along, for wisdom and guidance about the situation. Did I blow it? Did I miss it? Had this been the answer to all my long prayers, and I failed to discern it, failed to steward it properly to receive God's promise? I had tried. I had tried oh so hard to always do what was right, to seek God at every step, to commend things into his hands. But I had, of course, failed at many points, and that's always my weakness. I always doubt, not God's goodness, faithfulness, and kindness, but my ability to receive what he promises and then fulfills. Did I, by some sin or failure, forfeit what he promised, or lose what he sent, or miss the opportunity he gave me? This is what torments me.

The other bad thing about it is that, after we don't talk for some time, I start to heal, to get over it, to move on. But then, when we do, it rips my heart all open again, and leaves me bleeding on the floor, unable to move or help myself, just wishing I would bleed out and die.

Anyway, I had just been thinking about her and missing her, in the midst of my grieving for Adina, and there she was again. And so I thought, okay, maybe this is it. So we started talking about getting back together. We talked about marriage. We came quite close, but never quite there. She says she was not able to step back into that place of strong emotion, because she's got it boxed up where she's safe from it--she says loving me hurt a lot because she always felt second in my heart. 

As I prayed about it, I asked God to make my heart right. I knew she was right about that, although I had tried hard not to make her feel that way. And I prayed that he would make it clear to me which direction I should be taking in all this: whether to really pursue her and give her my whole heart, or to let her go and look for another fulfillment of his promise. I even wrote several drafts of long confessions of love, but left them unsent, because every time I got right up to the edge of taking this final step, I would get a strong message to turn back from it. I honestly don't know, at this point, whether it was God directing me away from it, or the Devil deceiving me to my harm, or my own subconscious manifesting fear. I did end up sending all of them at once, in the context of a discussion of the situation and my feelings, in their incompleted state, so she could see how I had been struggling. 

But it never came to be. And now she is gone beyond recall. And I am grieving like I have experienced yet another death. 

You see, the thing here is, it's not that I ever looked at this relationship and said, "This is right. This is perfect. This is definitely God's will; she is the one for me and I am the one for her, and I know we will be happy and blessed." I always had my doubts, and there were always very real issues, real obstacles to us being compatible. And I never experienced that clarity of divine guidance that I needed in order to set everything else aside and just obey. 

But on the other hand, my soul became attached to her like to no one else ever before. Not the wife that I spent seventeen years with. Not any woman I ever dated or any friend I ever had. No one. I bonded with her, because she gave so freely of herself; because she gave me the love, affection, and intimacy that I had craved and lacked my whole life. But for the serious Christian, the needs, passions, and affections of the soul cannot be the only factor, nor even the first.

But it's hard, when you need it as much as I need her. I am like a man who has spent his entire life living on the street, hungry and cold and miserable. Then, suddenly, was invited into a warm and comfortable room, with a wonderful banquet, an open buffet; a roaring fire; comfortable chairs and beds; company and fellowship; then, just as suddenly, was shoved back out into the cold, to hunger and freeze again.

But again, that need and lack can't be the only or primary factor when one is following God. So, rather than let my desires drive me, strong as they were (overwhelming, really), I prayed and put it in God's hands. "Lord, if she is the one you want me to marry, then bring her back to me. Bring us back together." But like I said, he didn't. So now I'm trying to adjust to that. But I feel like I've lost everything once again. Not just an ex-girlfriend and my only friend, but a best friend, a sister, a mother, a daughter. Like I've lost my wife.

The thing is, the thing that I never told her directly, is that the only thing holding me back from giving her all of my heart completely is that I was waiting to get the sure word from the Lord that it was his plan for us. As far as my human soul and feelings go, it was already hers. When I prayed about it, I asked God for the sign to be that she came back to me of her own will, not because I pushed or even asked her to. It had to be her decision. So, while we talked about it, I didn't press the issue. I think she saw it as hesitation and uncertainty on my part, but I knew what I wanted, I just needed for it to be her completely free choice, and God's will. But she didn't. So I have to take that as the answer to my prayer, in the negative. Not the answer I wanted, but his will be done, not mine. 

You see, when she first came to me, she was absolutely sure that she loved me totally and wanted to marry me. But I wondered. It was too fast for me to adjust that quickly, to give her what she asked me for at that time. And I wondered if it was too fast for her as well. I wondered if it was True Love. I wondered if she knew me well enough to really love me as much as she felt she did. I had no doubt that her feelings were very real--she convinced me of that completely. But there's more to Love than feelings. I've been accused of not knowing that, but let this action of mine lay that to rest. It wasn't that I was testing her, intentionally, it's that I needed to be sure that both my love and hers were The Real Thing. Not just feelings, not just need, not just circumstance. And most of all, I was searching for God's truth and his perfect will to be revealed. Because, once again, that is what matters to me above all.

So as painful as it is, as much as it feels like my soul is being torn to pieces, it seems that the answer to those questions is no, and I guess I have to accept that and move on.

To make it all worse, after a very sweet and beautiful time of intimate fellowship with God at Christmas, he has withdrawn from me, and I am, for the first time in my life, finding no consolation in him. I know what it is. It's a trial, another dark night. He told me it was coming. He said to me, "Are you ready to go into the next phase?" I said no. I said I needed a time of rest first, a time for everything to just be alright for a while. But he did it anyway.

I think it must be the second dark night: that of the spirit. I was wrong before when I thought that I had entered it--everything up till now has been the first dark night, that of the soul.. For indeed this one is, as St. John of the Cross said, "Darker and more terrible" than anything that has come before. One feels like one has lost God. He withdraws all, or at least almost all, of his "sensible consolations" and one feels abandoned, alone, lost, even damned. 

It may also be some sort of spiritual blockade, something I have to fight through. But its power is such that I haven't been able to make any headway against it. I pray, and read the Bible, and worship, and pray with others, and do all the things I've always done before, but it doesn't seem to make much of an impact, if any at all. It's like in a sci-fi movie, when someone shoots something protected by shields, and all that happens is a brief energy flare, leaving the target completely untouched. This is why I think it must be God's doing, and not the enemy's--you can't pray against God's will.

I know that this is what's happening. I know that it's the prelude to something better and more glorious than anything I've ever known. But I am crushed under it, and I find no hope, no consolation, no comfort, no joy, no peace, no happiness, in anything. And I don't know how long it's going to last. Mother Theresa's lasted her whole life. I don't know if I can face that. I have lost everything before. More than once. But to feel as though I have lost him, well that is so far beyond every other loss that it is as though they are nothing. He is what sustained me through all the other losses. He has been all I had, through most of my life. His presence, I mean. I know that he is still "there," but it is as though he is behind a veil, or more like a wall. I miss him.

And, also as the mystical doctors all write, I have been suffering temptations against hope and faith unlike ever before. Temptations to despair: to ultimate despair. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

"In becoming true, a man contributes to the world's becoming true. Moreover, if a man becomes true, he also becomes good, and likewise the world becomes good around him."

 -- Joseph Ratzinger