Like the Windmills Circling Madly

I'm not doing well. I sit down to do my accounts. It's one of the highlights of the month since there isn't much else to do other than bake, eat, and watch movies. I've diligently tracked every expenditure during the month, as always, in my hand-dandy Excel sheet. I count my cash. I check my bank balances. I lay aside the treasured dollar bills, so scarce these days. 

But I'm not doing well. 

I search for a familiar classical music playlist so I can distract my mind. I breathe a sigh of relief when my husband turns off the pressure cooker and the hood that whisks away steam from feeding the mold in our house. I decide not to try to figure out whether I had converted the offerings into the local currency or not. 

But I'm still not doing well. 

My husband has turned the beans and hood back on. The classical music is too familiar and irritating. The numbers start to blur and I HATE, absolutely hate, working in dual currencies. I know I can ask my husband, and probably should ask him, to set up a new budget system that will work better. 

But I sit frozen on the sofa. 

Anxiety has struck again. 

Today wasn't too bad. I'd actually slept well the night before, which was such a rare treat these days. My hayfever somehow had subsided to the occasional sniffle three or four times a day instead of violent sneezing or uncontrollable itching all day long. I'd lounged about all day, just cooking something, taking a nap, enjoying the rest day. 

But when faced with the reminder of how very fragile and uncertain life is, as I counted paper money that was worthless, meaningless, only able to provide for food and perhaps a car repair or two, I froze. 

Sometimes I have good days. Often I have bad days. When the good days come, I find myself surprised. I wait for something to happen, sure that the goodness cannot last. We live, after all, in a cursed world run by a demon and though we have a hope of something better after this life, there is no guarantee that our trust in a higher power will keep us off the streets, alive, and in somewhat decent condition. After all, small children scream silently at night when grown men violate their soul, so how can we possibly live with that? 

I realized the other day that I have taken the burden of the entire world on myself. If it was almost too much for Jesus to bear, the sins of the world that is, how can I even begin to imagine that I can bear the weight of the knowledge of evil? For that is what we have chosen, since Adam and Eve ate the fruit willingly. We live every day with the knowledge of evil and this is what dances tauntingly with our consciousness. We know, therefore somehow we are implicated in it all even if we do not know where or how people are suffering. We have no excuse because we know suffering exists. 

We are told in the Bible to speak simply. Let our yes be yes and our no be no. We should not swear by anything in heaven or on earth because God is in heaven and we sure have no control over what happens on earth. So instead I swear silently in my head. It's the Christian thing to do. It's the only way I can pierce the boil of terror and fright at what so many people are going through in the world right now, at this very moment. 

Maybe the anxiety has absolutely nothing to do with the figures I try to arrange into a logical order. Or with the pressure cooker that WILL NOT be quiet. Or with the knowledge that yet another gargantuan task lies ahead. Maybe it's none of them; maybe it's all of them. I do not know. All I know is that I feel this way. Often. And I don't know if it will ever end. And I'm scared.