I have a headache

The headache is from screaming, and from being heatedly angry for a long period of time.

Heres what happened:


I slogged on over to Mom and Dads today to do laundry and hang out with the family for a while, have a meal or two. Towards the end of the night, after everything had gone quite well, my mother did something that stuck in my craw. She asked me to help Grandma get to the doctors on Tuesday. No big thing in and of itself...but...it was the way she asked. I said sure, I'll do it, no problem. The way she asked was to put it in terms of how she needed the help. And it bugged the hell out of me. Oh I probably read too much into it, but I suspect her motives a lot. Perhaps if I hadnt...

Anyway. So I asked her if I could talk to her in a different room for a moment and she said OK. So we left the living room with Grandma in it and went out to the dining room. It started with a simple enough statement from me, "I don't like it when you put things like that". What I meant was, and let me try to remember clearly, it seemed like she was slapping me in the face. I believed, at the time, that the way she was asking me was...sort of ambush like. Asked me right in front of her, and made it a plea as well. Of course I'll help, but I did NOT like being put in that situation deliberately. She could have asked me like that aside, not in front of Grandma, or she could have just put it bluntly. "This needs to be done and I need you to help with it."

So I, foolishly, picked this as a time to take this particular issue on. I have this notion, which I aknowledge now is false, of my mother as being my Grandma's overzealous defender, to the tune of evicerating anyone she feels is paying the venerable old girl less than her vast due. Am I wrong? Heck, I don't know anymore. I do think the deliberate guilt trips on her part were wrong, and I think the way she put the question to me was...tactless, assuming it was not deliberate, in which case it was just a plain old ambush.

My mother deserves a defense here. She has three sisters, one of whom pays interest in helping Grandma out in her declining years, and she happens to live in northern California. The other two just aren't there. One is an alcoholic who has almost no contact with us anyway, and the other is a hardcore Jehovas Witness who in addition to having religious issues with the fact that we aren't JWs, also doesn't like my mom. So anyway, of the four sisters, my mother is alone in caring for Grandma. This is a big time stress addition. Not the caregiving, the lack of support. So she turns to us. And aparently the help has been there when she did so. Colin and Dad took time off school and work respectively and so did mom. All to get Grandma to her appointments. It has been decided at this point that she shouldn't have to go to any of them alone, in spite of the fact that she can still drive. After thinking about this, I agree. But I didn't before, becuase nobody told me that she was scared. Now I could be slapped for not just assuming this, but the woman never displays any fear. A point which my mother conceeded.

So there I was, not helping out. And then she asked me, and weather or not she did a deliberate ambush, she had a point. I had not helped much in the past. Now, in my defense, I never had more than short warning with one or two exceptions, one of which I confess I forgot about. It was cancled, thankfully, but I did drop the ball. In my further defense, of the people who can help her and go with her to her appointment, I am the only one whos long term future is critically dependant on being in a particular place at a particular time practically every day. Namely the Psycholinguistics lab at the U of A. I MUST earn my letter of reccomendation or I don't make it into graduate school. Period, no alternative. Is this more important than my Grandma? It shouldn't be. Is it in my head? I aknowledge for the first time that it may be. It is wrong for it to be so, but it maybe. Part of my lack of effort on the Grandma front was the fact that she is over at my parents house practically every Sunday, and as often as not so am I. So I see her freequently, but I didn't appreciate the upstep in importance of visiting her. Well, it's been scheduled now so I'll be doing it regularly.

Anyway, back to the ugly story (though the above massive paragraph covered a lot of background so it'll be short), this devolved into an ugly fight between me and my mom. It started with her being concillary and saying it was OK, she'd deal with it, I shouldn't bother with it. It was her 'rising above', and I couldn't stand it. I didn't think at the time, but I aknowledge now, that she may well have been doign just that. I took it to be a slap in the face, as it had in fact been any number of times in the past, when she did something like that. But I coudn't let it go, I sank my talons in and went for blood. I railed at her, falsely, for ripping the guts out of anyone who didn't kiss the ground Grandma walked on, just to exagerate it hugely for the sake of making a point. She fought back ugly, dared me to ask for even one more dollar of help from her. It should be said that Grandma gave me some cash to help cover expenses tonight, and it disgusted my mom that I was taking money from someone I 'refused' to help out.

Well naturally it wasn't any deliberate neglect, or lack of caring on my part. I honestly believed that I was unable to do anything useful because I was stacked to the max busy with all the stuff that Grandma had, in fact, paid for me to be able to do in the first place. Namely college. I do not argue that I had done less than my share.

I think what it boils down to is this. I've always looked upon my mother as someone who uses ugly tactics in an argument including guilt and bald faced false desperation etc... and I felt like ripping off her mask of deception and screaming it in her face that I knew exactly what she was up to. Well, I did. It was the taunting that I couldn't back away from. That gentile, 'no, I don't expect you to contribute. Just go away now and don't expect anything from me in the way of help. You don't help after all..." the deliberately calm tone of voice done for exactly the sake of...again I assume. I wanted to rub it in her face that be ugly and obvious tactics were plain for all to see and that nothing was lost on anyone. Well, I picked the wrong subject matter for the first place. She'll defend her mother like a scorpion defending it's nest, totally and with unremitting violence. And she percieved this as an attack on her mom. Here I was trying to proove that I was willing to help...she just kep telling me that no, I wasn't.

The whole damn thing sucked. I leveled at her an accusation of finantial extortion, do this or else I don't support you anymore, accused her of none too subtley ruling with an iron fist full of cash. Told her that nobody was even allowed to disagree with her without suffering the full unflinching fury of her anger, and that because she held reigns of power she could do just exactly that, that she was flexing muscle for the sake of flexing muscle.

It wasn't going to end. And then an angel of mercy showed up in the form of my dad who wanted to make peace. And he pulled it off, he totally pulled it off. He showed up and talked us down out of our trees, well, he talked me down out of my tree and he got Mom to lighten up. It took a while but we calmed down and made up.

I don't know exactly at what point the argument reached critical mass and took on a life of it's own but we did our share of screaming at each other, mostly in turns.

It is true, that I am neglegent. I forget to do things, and I just don't worry about them as much as I ought to. This makes my mother really angry, and ture enough, if I was good about it she probably wouldn't be. Hell, I don't know.

I look back at it, through the ache in my brain and the time spent relaxing in front of a video game afterwords...it was all just ugly, and I started it. I couldn't stand agreeing to her wishes when it meant swallowing all her insinuations without challenging them...if the insinuations were there in the first place...

I just want to go to sleep.

Forvie me Father for all the ugly things I have wrought this day, break them apart and let them cause no more suffering.

Alexey the Sinner.

Application looming

Soon...SOON I WILL SET MY EVIL PLAN INTO MOTION!!!!

Which is to say I"ll be applying for graduate school in about ten days. I've got to spurce up the 'ole personal statement. Put together an actual resume, get my transcripts, pay some fees, and collect my letters of reccomendation.

Soon it'll all be in God's hands. And under the kindly influence of whatever committies are evaluating my applications.

Help me out here Father, I'll need it.


Alexey the Sinner.

OK, not despairing as I was before.

Prayer can renew your heart. Totally. I love doing it, I feel better already. If you've been reading the post immediately before this one, I was despondant and fearing. I fear no less now I think, but I am not cheerless and depressed either. I am afraid, but excited, and joyful, and I think, less of a jerk than I was before. A little at least, I hope. Do read that post though, it is an excellent window into the heart of a desparing man who fears that he may be led astray from Christ. And in fact, it is somethign that can happen, but I have a warrior on my side who will not go gentily into the night. He will wage battle on behalf of my soul forever and ever untill the ending of days. I do not struggle alone, and in the end, I will make it in his Grace if I should choose to hold true to his teachings and his word.

Make me more hearing of thy truest teachings of Lord Jesus Christ. For I am in need.

Also, I really like St. Sebastian the Martyr. If there is a way, and I am going to investegate this, of taking his name as well as the name of my Patron Alexios, I am going to do it. Perhaps I can have an Orthodox middle name?

Alexey Sebastian Tilton. Good sounding name I think.

Here is an Icon of St. Sebastian.



Alexey the Sinner

I am really depressed.

This is something which typically does happen to me when I'm reading stuff concerning the end of the world. The thing which scares me most, at present, is the things which I think could decieve me when the end is coming.

For instance, I was reading an Orthodox website tonight, and I didn't realize that the Antichrist is going to dwell in the rebuilt temple, at least metaphorically. I just thought the rebuilding of the temple was a sign of the end. I did not think that whoever was in the temple was going to be Christ, but I had no idea it would be the Antichrist's seat of authority. It makes sense of course, because he will be the messiah to the unbelieving Jews. I'm scared. 'Watch ye therfore, for ye know not when the master cometh', I am scared.

All the things I don't know. And yet, with a simple Orthodox understanding, the vast majority of things which even the Othodox great ones of recent times have pointed out as alarming signs of the imminent nature of the Apocalypse, are dispelled. But I fear the subtlety, I fear the Antichrist will be so (i want to insert an explative here) clever that I will be led right into the lake of fire. I'm scared.

I read in an article by Hiromonk Seraphim Rose about a woman who, near the end of comunist rule in Russia, was institutionalized by the state authorities for crossing herself in public. They tried all sorts of things to get her to stop, though she held on strong. A group from a church learned about her plight and came to the hospital and talked to the doctors. Eventually the doctors admitted they had no laws saying they had to or even could keep her there, and they released her.

The woman, when speaking of her captivity to the churh members who got her out, said that while she was captive, she felt calm. As though there were a presence with her. But now that she was out, she was nervous about it happening again.

Part of this I take to be the human condition of simply not feeling as bad about a bad thing once it has actually begun to happen, as we do while we are waiting for it to happen. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, is worse than all the hell that follows.

While I do not claim or even think that the tribulations of the End of All Times will be less excruciating than the waiting for them, at least once they have begun, that feeling of anxiety, of wondering when it will happen, will then be aleviated. Honestly, in my human condition, as I am now, I fear the rack less than I fear living a long life. I do now know what horrors would be visited on me in a chamber with nobody but myself and the workers of torment, but Christ would be with me, because I would be suffering for his sake. Outside I am not suffering, and my prayer life is weak, I am sinful, and I am neglectful of the blessings I have been given. I am so base as to stay up late at night and then collapse into bed because I am too tired to do my prayers. This is not as freequent as it used to be, and I am doing better about it, but to my shame, it is fear of the End that is scaring me into line. I do Love you Lord Christ, and I do not desire to dissapoint you, bring me suffering rather than let things be so easy that I forget you.

Even as I sit and write these things, I fear the loss of my comfortable place in the secular world. But make me fear hell more. Make me fear not the loss of anything corporeal, Dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Son of God whom died upon the Cross as a sacrifice to break the power of Sin I am scared that my humanness will make me wind up in Hell. Break it away from me, burn it off, take my life apart in wreckage that i might praise you only and have no other recorse than to exhalt you or die. Free me from these things which imprision my spirit in my flesh, teach me not to care for things of this world, and teach me to live for the Kingdom which is to Come. Teach me not to fear the flames of fire and the ache of famin, teach me not to hate but to love those that annoy me and cause me irritation. Teach me to pray for my enemies now, in the here and now, that I am not caught unawares when the hour of darkness decends upon the earth and the Sun sheds no more light and the moon is as blood. Forgive me my many weaknesses which I embrace of my own wickid free will. Break me of my attachments to this place which is the physical earth and not the Kingdom Which Is To Come and Never Perish.

Break me as with a rod of Iron, that I may be humble and contrite. Make me to be more obediente to thy statutes and less attentive to that which the world which is wickid and fallen, has taught me to love.

Direct my mind away from fanciful fantasys and from yearning for things which are not in the here and now which I do not need. Break my thoughts instead of allowing them to surface in my brains when they are not directed at Your Glory. Deprive us not of Thy Heavenly Kingdom, but as Thou camest among Thy disciples, O Savior, giving them peace, so come to us and save us!

GLORY TO THE FATHER AND TO THE SON AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT!
BOTH NOW AND EVER AND UNTO THE AGES OF AGES AMEN!
KYRIELEYSON! KYRIELEYSON! KYRIELEYSON!
FATHER BLESS!

Alexey the Sinner.

And then again....

I did.

Yup. Couldn't not do it after all that posturing. Oh I felt the way I said I felt, and then after being admonished by everybody and their uncle, I felt differently. I don't know what any of that means. The practical output of the situation was that my manager OKd me to take my lunch early so I could go vote. Ironically, everything turned out exactly as it would have had I not voted. Arizona was easily in the Bush camp. All the ballot issues went exactly the way I figured they would, though in truth that is no clarvoyance because they were all either very easy calls, or valence propositions that nobody was actually against (basically maintinence laws of various sorts). The only one that I felt stongly about was known as "Proposition 200". It required presentation of US citizenship when registering to vote.

So...I did what I think I always knew I was going to do. I'd written it off, said I didn't like either of them. But when it came down to it, I felt an overpowering compulsion...that I could not, not speak my piece, raise my voice. I could not just...do nothing. I accept the Orthodox theology which suggests that the best thing to do is probably not vote at all, because voting is contrary to the Orthodox understanding that an earthly state is meant to be run by a Christian King. For the people, not the rulers but the ruled, to speak in the governing of the state is, in fact, wrong. But we live where we live. And we do not act in defiance of the law of the land in voting, but rather at it's invitation. America, is in its way, an abberition that spread to the rest of the world with the irresistable lure of greater personal freedom for the masses, where before everyone answered to some manner of a king.

But I did not make it that way. Though I was rased to cherish it, though we are raised to cherish many things which are Un-holy. Still, we are where we are. Is it wrong for Christians to vote? I don't feel wrong for having done it. But that means nothing, my feelings have been a poor guide to Godliness as long as I can remember. In a purely mechanical analysis, I must say, in retrospect, that yes, the act itself is wrong. And in this moment, I regret having done it, but damn...it was a strong draw. It was like...like having gravity pull you towards it. The system itself is wrong. It is ours to submit to authority, not shape that authority. Rulers are chosen by God, not by man, and for man to play at being God is an act of rebellion. God forgive me.


I'm sorry I couldn't see it before, I was blinded by my desire for change.

I am sorry.


Alexey the Sinner.