Life is Like a Spooky House

Do you ever feel like life is a bit like an old fashioned ride through a "Spooky House"?
The two-seater car was clanking along the tracks and the doors opened spontaneously to allow my cart to enter the dark and frightening emptiness.  I was an adolescent and this was the first time I had mustered enough courage to say “yes” to a ride through the dreaded amusement park attraction.  My cousin was sitting beside me as the tracks below us turned our car clanking around the bend, the last bit of sunlight at our backs.  My God, I thought, I simply can’t do this.
In a panic I jumped just as the doors were enveloping us.   I remember clearly that I caused quite uproar.  Everyone was screaming at me – the ride attendants and my Aunt and Uncle who had so generously treated me to a ticket. “You could have killed yourself, what were you thinking, what possessed you to do such a dangerous thing?!!” 
I remember feeling mixed emotions- embarrassment and shame yet, at the same time, great relief and thankfulness to be free from the unknown darkness that I had just escaped.  I remember thinking, I can master this another day, I’ll have this experience another time, another place.   
 I felt a little badly about leaving my cousin alone in the car, but then again she had been on this ride before and didn’t appear to be worried in the least.   She exited the ride none the worse for the wear making me feel all the more like a coward.
Lately, I am starting to feel more and more like I going through a “Spooky House” and there is no escaping the ride.  
There seems to be so much darkness and dread all around and I never know what is going to pop up in my face when I least expect it.   A beloved brother falls back in a chair and it kills him.  A dear friend sits dying in his favorite recliner as loved ones stand helplessly by.  I disappoint family and friends at every turn and I don’t even have the sunlight of understanding.   I’m criticized for not being “who I use to be” as if I have turned into some horrible ogre.   I don’t even have the comfort of my church anymore.  Oh sure, I still go on this part of “the ride” but as much as I would like to, and as much as I try, I can’t profess and support what I don’t believe in.   No, I’m not who I use to be and this is making ride all the more scary.