getting back into it

Do you ever feel like you are in a shark cage, feeling nervous -- hoping it doesn't show -- when you notice that it's not really a cage at all, merely a funnel of pipes guiding the shark directly for your head?

Sometimes I look around me at all the competent people I work with, all of them knowing what to do, when to do it, and me sitting there in awe wondering why they let me play the game with them.

I think I remember being a confident -- competent -- nurse. I'm just not sure how to feel that way again. My self-confidence is in a shark cage right now. Great Whites are swooping at me each night, and I keep ducking down, praying I can remember what to do, when to do it. So far, so good. I think.

My friends keep saying it will come back. When? When do I start to feel right about myself again? How long will it take before the cage starts taking the shape of a cage instead of a funnel? It just feels like I am pretending to be a nurse. Like I have people fooled -- patients fooled into thinking I actually know what I am doing, when inside there is a scared little girl ducking from the sharks, and praying none of them will notice me.

Well just look what I've gotten myself into now!!

I've never thought of myself as a blogger. I'm not even sure what one is. My friend is one, though, and I like her a lot, so maybe it isn't such a bad thing.

I'm in the process of recovering from the shock of my mother's sudden death, and the added violation of a burglary at my home within the month. I've found out a lot of things in the therapy I've been undergoing, and one of them is that people handle things differently from other people. I guess I knew that -- we are not the same (thank God). But many of the things I have been feeling are shared to a greater or lesser extent by other people. Some internalize their grief, some don't. Some find great comfort in their spirituality, some don't -- or don't have any to fall back upon. And some, like me, wobble back and forth between "handling it" and complete insanity.

The way I was raised, I thought I would be one who would find comfort in my faith. My parents were people of great faith, and they raised their children in a home in which Christ was the Head of the House. They are probably both spinning in their graves at my reactions to current events in my life (being good Baptists, we must "spin", we can't "dance"). I have found, however, that I rail at the Creator for His secret design, and constantly wonder "why?". I sometimes just don't understand how to make the concept of "God is Love" and the concept of "stuff happens" (it's in the Bible -- Ecclesiastes 9:11 -- look it up) coexist. It's not that I doubt the goodness of God, just His method of inflicting it.

That may sound like I am questioning my faith, and I guess the truth is, I am. I just keep holding on to the belief that God is big enough to handle my questioning, and hope like Hell that He won't give up on me until I get my stuff together.

Basically, I am not crazy, just temporarily insane.