Take heart. I see your heart. With all my heart, too. We say ‘heart’ but what we mean is our soul. For I have seen a heart, open chest, electrical dependence of each thumping beat, a glorified muscular pump, a necessary vessel: empty of all wonder. The heart we infer, the tragic little heart we call our soul, we cannot see. We can feel it, sense it, and witness the cause and effects of a good soul and a bad soul. What is that? A good soul and a bad soul. Or is there only a soul and the truth and untruth of it’s masters actions?
The soul and identity intertwined and woven in the hands of God, timeless and yet eternal. Either light shines upon the soul or darkness sets. A choice. Not a consequence nor a predetermined state. That delicate heart we call our soul, still receiving and pumping, but it’s contents are neither blood nor gas. Filled with love and responsibility, or emptied by hurt and failed intentions. A soul is a receptacle that can only gives in excess of what it receives. Divine input fills unconditionally. Human input often poisons. Yet we give it away, to him, and her, and them, and everyone in between: what’s left at the end of our earthly run?
This tragic little heart, a new shiny car we must drive eighty years. Maintenance and washes, bumps and crashes. Our most vital organ. Our most delicate possession. No person can stare into that soul. No earthly medicine can mend it’s broken state. It pains us more than skin and flesh, and yet longs for something more. Your soul is who you are, a reflection of a piece of the divine creator. But we see it through the fog and smoke of burnt lies and untruths. This bleeding heart of mine, longs to be restored. To be filled by God and overflow. Just to bleed once more.
I should have published the usual Sunday Sidebar yesterday, but chose to get up and move instead, followed by getting under the covers and hiding from the world for the rest of the day. Sunday Sidebar’s are for me- they pertain to grief and the journey back to life- but they are directed from whatever emotions are sitting on my heart at the time. Raw. Unedited. And I didn’t have much good to say yesterday. My prayer: God I know you are real, I know I am made in your image, I understand how you see me, I think. But today I have anger in my heart and I don’t know what to do with it.
People say give it to God a lot. What exactly does that mean? Hand it over mentally? Ask him to take it? Will it into his hands? All of the options sound like the promises of terot card readings and crystal balls. What if my anger is not only at myself, but a little at God? There is shame that comes with that feeling. God, I’m a little angry with you. Do you want to take that? I know he doesn’t deserve it. How dare I even ask. But David did. And God sure loved him.
“O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look hte other way?” Psalm 13:1
“How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my hear every day?” Psalm 13:2
So, I don’t know what people intend when they say give it to God. Mostly, because it implies he will take it away. And that is not typically the case. He will, however, join you and channel your passion for something better. Not necessarily better than what you lost, but better than your current bed of anger. C.S. Lewis said he sat with anger long enough until she told him it was grief. Something like that, anyway. The point is that anger comes with grief. And it is the last to leave. Especially when we admit there is a God big enough to save people, marriages, relationships, entire populations. And yet, here we sit doing everything and giving everything inside us to our pursuit of him with nothing but what seems like a new plan. I am angry that it is any plan other than the one I thought he blessed me with before. I’m angry it can’t be put back together. But all he wants is for me to share that anger with him. To allow him to show me where that comes from and what I can do with it.
Tomorrow will come and his mercies will be new. Sometimes you have to hide under the covers until the morning comes. And start again. One. Step. At. A. Time.
Romans 10:11: “As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.’”
What an awful, miserable, journey the death march of grief. To suffer the loss of love is to suffer the pain of death a hundred times a day: with every memory, hope, and dream. To suffer shame in grief, is to suffer the pain of death of the person whom you loved a hundred times a day: with every breath, every thought, every wandering moment. By the time the chaos of the mind slows, you are too far along for denial to protect you any longer. The anger and bargaining oscillate at a lower frequency; simple small electrical discharges in random moments throughout your day. Acceptance has visited you as if in a dream but remains an illusive apparition. Yet, now, there lies an opportunity to be still and to know.
In those moments, rather than pleading “why”, there is a chance to ask the real questions. Your conversations with God have been raw and exhaustive. You’ve shaken your fist, spit, screamed, cried, begged, praised, worshiped, fallen asleep, and woke up with sun every morning. And each morning his mercies were new. But even then, I had to ask: Can God see me through all of this shame?
So, I asked him, “God, can you see me through all of this shame?” “Can you even look upon me and recognize me?” I look in the mirror and I see the man that failed. I close my eyes and I witness my mistakes. I feel my emotions and they tell me I am a failure, beyond redemption. I am scared. Scared of what it is hard to say: loss, never having my person again, repeated failure, my reputation, my legacy…I’m scared that I am unredeemable. As I closed my eyes and shared my fears with God, I found myself in a beautiful green valley, surrounded by tall green hills, the fire burning off to the side, neatly maintained, and Jesus standing there with his arms held out. Our place, the safe space he created for me to see him and hear him where my thoughts quiet and my heart is open enough to receive.
God spoke. “I see you. I see only you. I made you from myself, a reflective piece of my body, innocent the day my spirit conceived of you. I named you before you were born. And it means ‘Bold’. I see a compassionate man, with passion to heal others. I see a love for my creation, a joy in the beauty of nature. I see only the man I created and the purpose I created him for. I cannot look upon your sin. I only see you in truth. Your untruths and your sins were forgiven and redemption was purchased, not earned, but given by my sacrifice. I feel your sadness, I feel your hurt, I feel your grief. But shame- I despised the shame I took upon myself at the cross, and it died with me, and I rose again so that you do not have to carry that burden. Your story is not over. I am the way, the truth, and the light. None of these can be obtained without the other. Follow me in truth and you will live in the light. Joy will fall upon your heart again. My kingdom you will serve. My peace I will give you beyond your own understanding. You serve the one true King and you are a jewel in my crown upon the throne I sit. Get up and start moving, I will be your strength in weakness. I see you.”
I cannot tell you how real my experience talking to God has been. That what he promised he has continued to fulfill faithfully. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, a once staunch diest who never doubted a creator or believed he was interested in intervening in my life. But as I stood up and moved, he consistently performed miracles in my life. I am still sad. I still hurt. I still grieve. And often I find my mind wandering, accumulating fear, whispering to me how disgusting of a failure I am. So, I return to that valley constantly, and he is always there, reminding me of my true identity.
My, how I have run to escape her, this thing called Fear, for nearly all of my life. I was introduced to her as a child: the blunt force, cold isolation, rancid stench of it’s presence in the room, as if it had only recently roomed with death before turning me to its prey. A devilish beast known to play with it’s food, leaving the hunted paralyzed and shaken but still alive. Fear. Fear of fear. The cycle that infects a lifetime of otherwise divine potential.
The more I hid from all of my fears the more creative she became. She’d strike and pierce my side or my heart, inflict my thoughts and my dreams; and though her presence was known, I could not see her though I tried. I saw instead anger, depression, rage, anxiety, abandonment, embarrassment, even laughter on the strangest of occasions. I saw desperation to protect myself, guard my heart, run, fight, hide. But it was her, I am sure. Fear, masked in my outburst, demanding I take control of everything or my fate would be the grave. Or worse, loneliness.
While she distracts you from awareness and leads you to your darkest emotions, how quickly she will work upon your heart and mind. Silencing God. Convincing you of great personal afflictions. Replacing your self image. Holding you back and tying you down. Fear is the great illusionist. An instinct for survival that secretly desires to be so much more. An irony that survival can be worse than death when consumed by her spirit. Fear needs to be fed and her appetite is endless. The pain of loss of flesh leads to coping and coping is our greatest temptations of false comfort when it is fear that has instructed us all these years.
Fear wears a thousand masks. Yet all of fear dies a thousand deaths when illuminated by truth. Love can never, ever, be received in a state of fear. That is why God did not create us in a spirit of fear, but one of strength, and power, and self-discipline. God hears us and he knows our fears. But we cannot hear him when we are consumed by it. Every prayer must start with an honest confession of our fears, a request to see ourselves as God sees us in that moment: fear will run and hide from the light shown in the truth. And the truth is that God makes each of us in his image. So that when we are weak, his strength is made perfect. He calls me Bold. And I rarely feel so, but when I need it most he says it out loud. You are bold. Because in your weakness you embraced me, you were brave, and you will have my strength.
“This is my command- be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9
“Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie”. Jordan Peterson
When I asked God to remove anything that might be getting in the way of hearing him speak to me, He gutted me. There was dishonesty that I didn’t even know existed. Unlike the loss you experience of a loved one from cancer that comes in the night, I orchestrated the disease that led me to lose the one I loved. As men, it is easy to run and seek comfort in a million other people, places, or things. But nothing would satisfy this loss. I lied. I sinned. I broke promises. I ruined something amazing for myself, but even worse, for many other people who truly loved me. The dreams and hopes that died for me? They died for the other side too, but because of me. How do you go on after that? How do you carry that shame and guilt? No apology seems to do. The only thing that I understand to do is to let God complete his work in me and have faith that he will use it to heal all of us. There is no antidote. No rewind. There is only God in the end. And therefore, there is only God in a new beginning.
I have to pray alone and tell God what I think every day and ask him to verify it just to know I am seeking and speaking the truth. Some things I hear or see back shock me. Some things don’t. Some things, like when he finally answered my “why” hurt, because he was right. And the truth, when initially avoided, can be very painful. All of the apologies in the world won’t undo an ounce of the pain of a lie. Don’t be like me, don’t let dishonesty creep up this late in life. It is gross. And it is not who you, or I, am in the slightest. We are the honest representation of God. So, the only way forward is an honest representation of him. With honesty comes the opportunity of repetance. With repentance comes grace. With grace comes freedom. But the pain of your lies lasts forever.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. –Ranier Maria Rilke, Go to the Limits of Your Longing
When I began my grief, all I wanted were answers to the why’s. Why did I make any mistakes? Why wouldn’t she listen to me? Why wouldn’t she want to work through this and save what we vowed to uphold, for better or worse? Why this pain? Why is God silent? Why can I not seem to move forward? WHY? As my grief evolved, so did my relationship with God. I still don’t know the answers to any of those questions. But I have so many other answers he found necessary to reinstate my identity and to see myself as the man that I am. I carry great pain, loss, and sadness. And I struggle with shame that gets in the way of progress at times. But those are the forming scars; proof that it was real. And God’s voice is proof that he is real.
If there is one area I did not fail myself, it was that I directed all of my anger and passion onto Him. I ignored my conditioning to believe that I could only come to him in reverence and I swung everything I had to challenge his realness. It turns out, what I was challenging was myself and he was there to answer. Whether I was cursing him or praising him, he was there. My questions evolved, and so did his answers. There was no silver bullet and no silver lining. Only a God willing to share in the suffering and pull me to safety.
The day my life fell apart I sat prepared in a bed of suicide. I cursed God saying, how many people have called out to you for help before they pulled the trigger, and you were silent? Suddenly, a startling knock on the door. Dogs barking. Who saved me then? I continued to spiral in pain. Calling out loud for help while simultaneously accusing him of absent fatherhood. A form of bargaining and manipulation aimed at forcing him into instant repair of the life I once had. But the chaos that was surrounding me was because the life I once had wasn’t the life he wanted for me.
Do not misconstrue my words- it wasn’t God’s plan to upend my life. He didn’t want my person to turn their back on me and walk away. He didn’t want a covenant to be ruined. No more than he wanted me to make my own poor choices. He had chains to break in me that could be freed no other way. He doesn’t make your partners choices for them, just like he doesn’t make yours- he is there to heal your marriage but not force someone else to participate. And ultimately, he is there to heal you even when you lose everything you love or hoped for. Sometimes, in my screaming and crying and constant questioning, the only thing I would hear from him was, “keep showing up”. I didn’t know what I was doing. Still don’t, really. But if you keep showing up, you’ll find he is always there waiting. Not in silence. Not observing you and teaching you a lesson through his absence. He is there. Present and already at work.
God wanted me to see myself how he saw me. To start with self honesty. To know I am a good husband, a good father, a good son, a good brother, and an amazing human being. It’s hard to say those things. But it was easy for him to tell me- over and over again.
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me. – Galatians 2:20
The word innocent; it burns my own tongue and lips to utter and sits like a hot knife in the back of my mind. I am not innocent. I know, with all of my heart, that I am a good man. But innocent? No, I lost that long ago- or so, I thought. I have carried by guilt and shame like war trophies around my neck, felt the wrath of human judgement that burns like the fury of hell, and condemned myself to a place of suffering deserved by those who dare to violate the foundation of their moral values. This feels just. It feels deserved. Righteous punishment.
It is not surprising, then, that hearing God speak to me that I am innocent before him is painful, if anything, and impossible to comprehend. The idea that, perhaps, I never lost my innocence. Indeed, it could be so, as I was born into sin, that I never started at a place of innocence in the first place. I wasn’t born with it, I didn’t earn it, I’ve lost it many times: redemption. As I wrestle with my loss, a great loss due to my own confusing choices, I feel nothing but guilt and shame. Therefore, I wrestle too, with the idea of redeemable innocence. The idea that God redeemed me, that he only sees the real me and not the version of me that operated in falsehood, and upon that redemption is my innocence. I am not inherently innocent, but it is by his redemption that I am free of guilt. That does sound lovely. There is nothing more difficult to make sense of than this concept when you are suffering the loss of your own sin: actions, for which, you are guilty.
The only way that I might even begin to partially understand this concept of true unconditional love is to step outside the human constraints of time. We see each other from moment to moment. Always looking for confirmation that the person we are most vulnerable to is not who we thought they might be. Easily erasing the true heart and good of a man by summing him up by his mistakes and poor choices. After all, we must protect ourselves first, right? If they could do this now, they could do this 20 years from now. I thought they were good, but they proved me wrong.
The idea of unconditional love is a reflection of God’s love. He loves who we truly are. That is to say, that he loves the unique person and identity you were born with, delineating between the person who acted in sin and the person that truly exists. He is just to redirect us and remind us of who we are, but he does not recognize us as our sin. He cannot look upon sin, he only sees who we truly are. That is why we say, God never gives up on us. He cannot. This means, we are not only forgiven, we are not only free of guilt and shame, we are innocent. We seem incapable of doing just that for the people we love even the most. And we seem incapable of doing that for ourselves.
Grief is a game of loss in life. The steaks are literally life or death. So we have to search for the sparks of hope that are whispered between the screams of our tortured souls. One of those whispers that longs to be heard is: That is not how I see you. I see the real you. Redemption is yours and you are innocent not because you paid the price of suffering, but because I already did.
Knowing your true identity is our only fail proof navigation system in life. It is not about “finding yourself”. It’s about being honest with God and asking Him to know yourself, as He knows you.
The loss that brings your greatest grief strips you naked. It reveals your most vulnerable self to yourself and to the world. The bruises, the lacerations, the bites and scratches, the decaying flesh: frozen in time and space, unable to move and avoid the embarrassment and shame of your appearance and place. The universal experience of grief is not pain, it is the endless questions that plague your heart and mind. In this state, battered and deformed, it is hard to recognize yourself. You remember who you thought you were: who you were known to be. And you remember the mistakes you made, the horrible things you called yourself, and the horrible things people now call you. This, at a time when you are most vulnerable and must lean on whatever identity you can summon. How easy it is to believe that you are a wretched soul, deserving of this, and that this grief is your true identity.
The truth be told, if we were true to our identity we would rarely experience an unhealing grief. If we could forgive others, forgive ourselves, see God’s hand, and make our choices only within the true unique identity he gave us, we would have never have faltered and we would remain in his peace. We would not have lost our person to bad choices. Or we would celebrate the life of the person taken from us and heal in understanding of God’s eternity. But the struggle of dishonesty about our identity begins like a quiet and unseen virus, infecting our self perception before we start to display the symptoms. And when we are laying in the ashes of our most profound loss, what we need of who we are is hardest to see.
Honesty and confession. That moment where we find ourselves with only a shallow breath remaining and no will to go on- no more self defense, no energy to fight, no sense of direction- accepting the wave of self defeat and hoping for death…that moment is our opportunity to tell God what we call ourselves. Tell God the names and descriptions of what we believe has become our identity. I told God that I believed I was alone, unloveable, unredeemable, a failure, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad friend, a bad son, a bad brother, insecure, unworthy. I imagined myself sitting in the burning dirt and brush, bleeding and broken, unable to stand. The car I was in only moments before, full of a happy family, a loving wife, a satisfied husband, now wrapped around a tree, mangled in a heap, still smoking. I wrote those names on a list as Jesus walked up behind me. Reaching down with one hand he grabbed the list, dark and shaded in gray scale and no color. As his hand took the list a light spread down the paper and my outstretched arm. His other hand grabbed me by the side and lifted me up. As the light flooded in, like a rapidly rising sun over the horizon, the landscape was revealed. I was there, again, in the valley between flush green mountains, the fire burning beside us, flames dancing as if rejoicing my prodigal return. His arm never left me, but he reached down with the other hand and placed my list into the flames. It flashed, consumed by the fire, and a dove emerged: beautiful, white, disappearing high over the surrounding hilltops. Gentle, genuine lover, caretaker, resilient, father, son, friend, protector, fighter, servant, willing; He called out the names of my identity as he saw them, written on his heart. He pointed to look above me and there were the pieces of my world, his many angels working diligently, picking up the many fractured parts, building new ones, and putting it slowly back together.
Our identity is unique to us. But it was gifted and generates its actions the same: through love. And because he first loved us, that while we were yet his enemies he died for us to live eternal as his children. There is no condemnation in Christ. That is hard to understand when the blisters of self condemnation still drain from your grief and shame. But it is true. And if we accept our honest and true identity, we have all we need to remain in his steadfast direction.
Jesus had an identity that was unique to him and served as his compass throughout his life and ministry. It was proclaimed when he emerged from the water, held by John the Baptist: ” And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” Matthew 3:17. He chose not to accept the false identities hurled at him from those who loved and hated him, the world, and evil. And his path, his identity, brought us to freedom.
“Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” — Stephen King
There are some things worse than death: loss of true love and separation from God. The pain exists in the space between the connection had and the seemingly endless future of connection lost. Like a ship lost in a storm with no sails and no rudder, we are at the mercy of the wind and waves, we drown below the surface of the deep waters, or succumb to the pounding rain above. One or both may never recover. One or both may. Only one is not reliant on the limited forgiveness, love, understanding of the will of man. That of the connection of God cannot be permanently deleted. God doesn’t walk away from us with his back turned because of hurt and anger. He cannot. He is part of us. And that connection is always a choice of our own, unlike a covenant between two fallible people.
I always thought that choice was a one time event. That forgiveness was available but not free. That it required some significant strength or quantity of faith and belief that had to be satisfactory to the cosmic police to get me into good standing. That confession meant saying “I am sorry”. None of that is found to be true when you are moments from being a corpse, with nothing that made you who you were remaining, your life in utter ruins. Sorry, did not connect me to God. Honesty did. And it wasn’t my strength, or quantity of faith, that led him to start picking up the millions of pieces. I know because I had no strength or faith remaining. I was on my final breathe when he stepped in to lift me up. Surrounded by angels. And even if we are still on life support, when he comes because we were honest to him and asked the right questions, we are at least no longer lying in the grave.
I take a deep breath in, fill my lungs to tightness against my chest wall, a relieving stretch, and then release downward, pressing, pushing, feeling. Closing my eyes I repeat. Over and over again. I fix my thoughts on God. In this case, I fix my thoughts on Jesus and keep breathing. Yaweh: breathing in, Ya, and out, Weh. Slowly and deeply as I return my chaotic mind to focus on Him, over and over. Then I asked a question: Jesus, can you be in this room here now? Jesus, can you be right here, present, in this room and on this couch in a home once filled with joy that has been shrouded in the darkness of my sins against a holy covenant and stained by the blood of broken hearts? “Yes”. “I’m here.” Like a shock from my temporal lobes that spread throughout my mind, I heard Him speak, I saw the words, I felt His presence. I would never be the same. How could I be? Let’s begin, then.
For months, I don’t know how to even begin to describe the unraveling of my world. Too much, if not all of it was wound into one person. That person meant, and will always mean, more to me than any human being I’ve ever known. But our love had different conditions. And it turns out I was unloveable and cancellable, after all. And after all, anyone except the most present in Christ would say I deserve it. But no matter how severe I messed up, my love was very true. And my heart was in that person. I only was struggling to love myself. So when it all unwinds it creates a great deal of chaotic momentum and confusion; one looks to God and hears nothing. I thought I could provoke God from His sleep with my anger, my sadness, my genuine devotion. Bargaining. Nothing. Screaming. Crying. I tried it all. But I couldn’t hear or see him through the smoke and ashes I was flinging about. I silenced Him. But He was there.
Jesus came to me- in the beautiful green mountains like rising emeralds. We were alone and a fire burned near by, well kept, and flames dancing about. He had removed my heart from my chest. It was large, as big as a volleyball, and he was wrapping in a white cloth. He placed it back into my chest and reached his hands out, palms up, scars in his palms. I looked down and blood was running from my chest and down my arms and hands. I reached out and put my hands in his and he began to bleed. His blood, dark rich red, flowed down his arms and covered my own. I asked questions, even as this vision disappeared and was replaced by a soft nothing. He showed me her pain and showed me how He sees her. I was broken, but I felt a presence. I asked if I could see her one more time and He said, yes, soon. The next morning, I awoke early to join a friend for breakfast from my old men’s group. A group that I held dear but have not returned to due to my own shame and embarrassment. I passed through a red light and there she was turning into the median. I saw her long enough to see she was safe, content, alive, well…All the things I used to be a part of. All the things I want for her.
I know I’ll never see her again. But God delivered on His promise. He spoke to me and it happened. And he talks to me still. Constantly, reshaping and remaking and finishing my real identity. The identity he gave me at birth that I allowed to be hidden. The part of me that make people feel safe and loved. The part of me that is connected to the kingdom. And He tells me what he calls me as I confess to him the horrible things I call myself. How I have longed to see God like this-even in my darkest hours with pain that I could have never fathomed. How I have longed feel His presence. And how I look forward to sharing more of it with you.
