Help for Future Wounds

I am just telling this little story because I think it is interesting.  I recently bought a roll of gauze at the drug store for a wound on my hand, but then the wound healed and I did not need the gauze.  And when I was straightening up my apartment and found the gauze that I no longer needed, I started thinking that maybe God knows that I am going to have a gash my hand in the future and that is why he arranged for me to have some gauze on hand.  Get it? On hand? But anyway I am saying what if the whole reason I got the gauze was for another injury coming soon.  Like a guaranteed gash on my hand that could happen any day and is part of destiny. It made me feel scared, and then I figured out that I was being a little bit mentally ill and those thoughts were irrational.  I think it is kind of an interesting story, because people do have illogical worrying sometimes, and I think it is good for me to catch myself doing it because a lot of my worrying doesn't seem illogical.

Suicidal Prayer Credit

I think many people will say I am wrong about this and that it is bad theology but I think I am right enough to give people this idea so that they can have the same hope and endurance that has benefitted me.  The idea that I am sharing is simple, which is that if people have lived through any amount of suicidal thinking, it might be a good idea to just pray even a few of the biggest prayers you can think of for everyone you know and for your society because it could be a very special thing that you are still alive, and this might add some power to your prayers.  That is where people say okay no wait a minute you don't earn prayer power through your own efforts but I am not sure everyone really knows how everything works and I think once there have been significant threats to people's survival, and especially a chronic danger or a questioning of whether it is worth it to go on, then that is a clue that people's mere presence and existence is not something to take for granted, and just the effort of a few extra moments of thoughtfulness might be something that God is willing to match a millionfold. Is that so weird?  I am saying that when I have gotten through or am even in the middle of discouragement so bad that I think I can't go on, it takes five seconds to ask God for a million feasts and forgiveness for everyone who has ever lived.  I mean it is times like that when you ask for salvation for all mankind, or for everyone ever to have the relief that you can no longer even imagine.  Do other people not have a hunch that their prayers might be worth a little extra after twenty years of struggling to stay alive?  It actually is hard to do sometimes, because depression so often brings a feeling of being so bad that God would never answer any prayers.  But couldn't the suffering also be proof that something good is at risk, and might that thing be something as simple as one little prayer prayed for everyone at the right time?  I do not think I will ever regret trying to add prayer to my despair.

Seen and Unseen

There is a book called Blindness, by a guy named Saramago, or maybe a movie that I am getting it confused with, but basically the concept is that everyone goes blind except this one lady who can still see and she gets mixed in with all the blind people and is able to help them because of her sight.  I really liked the book and was thinking the other day that some of my experience with mental illness is like being both a blind person and the seeing person in that same scenario.  And it might not be my mental illness as much as it is an Asperger's profile with extreme gifts and extreme deficits.  Basically what happens is that I am a terrible helpless mess a lot of the times, but also a very capable strong person who can save the day for everyone around me.  There are days and times where I lean more in one direction, but mostly I am just a mix of these things every day.  And the effect it has is that I see for myself how disabled people are treated, but I know the cost and intent of that treatment as someone who is also not disabled.  I could probably write a much more thorough essay with examples, but I think that just mentioning it is enough for now.  I think in a way we all have kind of a spy quality to us as humans, and Christ himself said that what you do for the least of these is what you do for him.  So people are all kind of in a Shakespearian Twelfth Night play where people's true identity is eventually revealed and justice happens as people are exposed in their compassion or snobbery.  But I do think that there is some weird way where as a mentally ill person I experience this more than normal, and I see people include me with strength that I have used for other people before, or I see people dismiss me or even abuse me when they do not know what kind of insight I have into their absolute hypocrisy.