Velocitization

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

          When you’ve been driving on an interstate highway for several hours (or perhaps even several minutes) and you exit onto local streets, doesn’t it feel like you’re going so slowly? Isn’t it hard to take your foot off the gas and do thirty-five instead of seventy-five? There’s a word for that. You’re velocitized. It’s a habit. Your body has gotten used to the faster speed, and slow feels like snail’s pace. 
          Life with another person always involves accommodating the other’s wishes, but when you’re a caregiver, or at least when I was a caregiver, that accommodation goes out the window. Eating right, exercising enough, even being disciplined about one’s thought life can be left behind because your attention is needed elsewhere. The habit of stress, the habit of being on call, of loving when it’s not easy, the habit of maintaining crisis mode because any second there could be a crisis – anything from “I want a drink” or “I have to use the commode” to needing to call an ambulance. It doesn’t matter who the loved one is, a dad or a dog – there’s a sort of velocitization that takes place.  
          When the crises are over and the loved one is gone, there may be the normal stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, or the caregiver may have already grieved. There’s something else. There’s the velocity, the crisis-response. It’s like your internal accelerator is stuck. You go somewhere that is supposed to be relaxing, and everything inside you says, Go! Move! No time! Hurry! Your grit your internal teeth and tell yourself you have time. You can stop. You can enjoy. But you can’t. Trying to relax is stressful.
          What’s hardest about it is the fact that the crisis mode is now normal. “I have to…” is the chorus that you sing every ten seconds (or so it seems.) 
          What does all of that have to do with today’s passage? Fear and dismay are bound up in crisis mentality. It’s not necessarily, “I’m afraid my loved one is going to die,” but for me there was a lot of “I’m doing a lousy job.” 
          Yesterday, I spent some time thinking about Elijah up on the mountain, bemoaning his fate. He’d been battling against Ahab and Jezebel for so long, he’d just had a magnificent final battle with the priests of Baal. God had answered his prayer to end a three-year drought (during which he’d been miraculously provisioned) in a dramatic way, and he’d outrun Ahab’s chariot back to the capital. Victory after victory, but when Jezebel said, “I’m going to kill you…” he ran away to the mountain of God and fell apart. God had to remind him that He is in the still, small voice. 
          Fear and dismay are both crisis responses, even when there isn’t a crisis. They can become a habit of existence. Into that reality, God gives some of the encouragement I wrote about yesterday. “Do not fear…do not be dismayed.” Bang down your gavel and have Fear and Dismay carted off to prison, or better yet, exiled to a far country. We’re not talking about a “Yeah, I guess I don’t need to be afraid anymore, or dismayed” and it all goes away. This involves, as Dallas Willard described it “ruthless” removal of fear and dismay from your life. And the means of accomplishing that is to be encouraged by God’s command.
          One more step. When you read about habits, one of the critical steps in ending one is replacing it with another. You don’t give up cigarettes, you replace cigarettes with walks (for example.) And with what habit does God suggest we replace the habits of fear and dismay? With the habit of God, with the habit of faith, and with the habit of hope. All easily said…now to do.