There was rumor once, of a place in me that grew, the most beautiful of lush green gardens. Rich was the soil, dark and moist, from which sprung life: foliage of all the colors bright and plain. Rumors told, too, that God wandered there; His own Son even prayed, knees upon that very soil, moist then from the sweat of his brow, from which sprouted more life so pure. Trees reaching, stretching their outermost fingertips to the skies in worship. Every ray of sun bleeding through to the pathways of unworn grass, untouched by weed or pest. There was rumor that garden, beautiful and green, was painted on my soul. What’s more, the rumors were true, whispered among the angels who watched me grow, that the garden was me, every tangled limb and reaching leaf the pieces of my being. My heartbeat vibrating softly through the vines and across the forrest floor. Living. Breathing. Known.
Did you hear the rumor then? That the trees did scream, too. Their pain was heard not by man or dog, but by ears eternal. The garden grew, but was not maintained. Weeds were gathered and planted about. Their thorns and vines striking through the soil, seeping up it’s moisture, strangling every flower that bloomed. Suffocating new life. The trees looked on in terror. Protectors of this forest floor, shade to the garden that was my soul. Rumor has it, it started with a spark. Not divine, but intended for evil. That spark grew, and drew upon itself every ounce of air til flames erupting, jumped about. That fire burned, hot and high, devouring every ounce of deadwood that fell, consuming vine and weed, branch and limb. Rumors spread, that the pain was savage, that even the trees did scream, too. Until after rain, and setting sun, and morning new: remained the life, once smothered by every weed and rotting log peaking through.
There is a rumor now, that God recognizes every plant that remains upon this garden floor. His watchful eye and strong right hand moving burned deadwood away. It is no rumor, that garden grows beautiful again today.
I wish I could go back and tell myself a few things, the same things I would tell anyone younger than me. There is no avoiding pain and chaos; those are the tools that use your ingredients to formulate your future. But there is self-inflicted pain that is more than anyone should have to experience. I would tell anyone, God made you uniquely in his image and then remained. He didn’t walk away from a finished product, but you are a finished product. Will you evolve? Yes. But are you uniquely everything wonderful that you need to already be? Yes. He is with us because he is written into our image and our being. God is a creator. He sees a blank canvas and he longs to paint a beautiful picture. You are that picture before you were even born. You do not have to earn that image. You do not have to find that image. You are not meant to edit that image, to add to it, or subtract. You are that image now and will remain so forever. Step back from the painting that is you, and see yourself as God does. Never wander from that image that you are because that is where pain lies- in the oils and paints of humanity. Be true. Be loved. And accept yourself for everything you truly are while you refuse to believe the lies.
“Before you were formed in the womb I knew you” Jeremiah 1:5
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.
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.
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” ― C.S. Lewis
The ashes of my terminal end seemed to fall about me for months. My panic persisted in abundance as I frantically thrashed about emotionally, desperate not to feel this remarkable pain of loss. Begging and bargaining out loud to nobody, waiting, screaming in an empty house, breaking into sudden fits of sobbing. I watched as she erased me from her life with out a word spoken to me. I thought of what helped in the past to cope with pain. Drugs? Never again, they only made my life worse the first time. Alcohol? I was too fearful I would take my own life if inhibited. Exercise? I couldn’t move. Frozen on the couch in a constant state of terror. Memories everywhere. Thoughts of her moving on to break her own promises too soon. I searched through a dating site and panicked in 36 hours, shutting it down- I couldn’t even imagine touching another person. I googled vacations and places to travel. Why travel with no person to make memories with, especially without the person you traveled with so much before the fall? Okay, all else failed perhaps a new hobby? Fear had become my new hobby. No light could shine onto any new possibility. To be honest, very little light still shines through the cracks of this prison wall. I found that all I could do is ask, why? Why God? WHY?
Driven by fear and pain, “why” is the first question on the lips of every suffering child. It necessitates a satisfactory answer. It mandates a response that is fulfilling. I only want to hear one thing- I’ll fix this. My entire being is so consumed by the flames of fear that any response to my cosmic questioning, except all that I lost will be reinstated, will not suffice. “Why did this happen”, falls from my mouth and lungs so many times that it eventually evolves unnoticed to “why aren’t you answering me”? My mind is so chaotic all I can hear is the constant drone of unwanted memories and the sound of my heart breaking into more pieces. My body and mind buzzing with a million thoughts, regrets, alone beneath a blanket of shame. I ask for forgiveness but cannot even come close to forgiving myself. Hanging myself on that cross without the respect of a burial and certain of no resurrection. I believe God exists. I believe he can put me back together, speak miracles into existence, calm my storm. But I only want one thing from him. So, what I perceive is silence.
When I found him in the garden, he was praying quietly, but he was speaking to me still: calling to me. Not giving me an answer. Not taking away my pain. Just inviting me to sit and share in his own experience of grief, even to the point of death. I had to wander in on him, there in that garden, several times. It took multiple invitations. Eventually, I sat there long enough to hear him speak again. “Now come with me to the cross”. Fear again took over because the cross demands my confessions. But this is what I asked him for: to hear him speak. Even then he did not answer my why. He wouldn’t because I already knew. I know why I am here. Instead I finally asked him what- what should I do? What do you want? What can I learn? What am I? What do YOU WANT ME TO UNDERSTAND? And then, the slightest movement. The next vision. The next image. Coming in more clearly every time. Speaking to me. First he demanded honesty. He demanded me to speak the truth in my confession. Then he walked toward the cross and I hoped to follow. That was my first real experience knowing for certain that I heard the voice of God. No voice at all- but I heard it still. What now? Well, I don’t know. But I do know, at least, He is real. And He speaks to me.
“Why” still wanders into my heart every few minutes, it seems. It still sucks the air out of the room and pierces my chest with sudden pain. I try to redirect my question to “what”. Knowing that “why” will trap me and “what” will eventually free me. Hoping. Wanting. Wishing. What do you want me to understand, Lord?
God still speaks to us. Why is God silent when we need him most? He isn’t standing by. He isn’t teaching us something through silence. He isn’t sadistic. The answer is chaos. There is so much chaos. So much pain and loss that terror fills every part of us so that all we can hear is the echos of our screams. For the same reason we are unable to see someone’s love and commitment to us when it is right in front of us and we make choices that contradict our true identity- we don’t see that we are standing in our own way while God speaks. He speaks: through feelings, emotions, thoughts, dreams, words, visions… But if I am so surrounded and filled with FEAR, I cannot hear the voice in the storm. Fear of losing what we had forever. Fear that we already know it will never return to “normal”. Fear that what God will say we do not want to hear. Because only one thing, one single response, would do. And that is what we want most and most what we cannot have. And fear is so damn loud.
My vision comes to me in low resolution, like an old television, bunny ear antennae straining in different directions to pull in bits and pieces of the image across the screen. Christ kneeling in a garden. It’s dark. It’s dark all around in the trees that surround him with a single torch burning in a small clearing. He doesn’t look at me. I cannot see his face. I see his clothes. His robe- brown and white, his low resolution bare feet behind him but I cannot make out his toes. Odd that I look every time. I hear him praying quietly, desperately, and with fervor. He is sweating and it drips to the ground. I hear him praying. And I hear him say “come sit with me”. He doesn’t pause his prayer, he doesn’t turn to say anything to me, but I hear him.
This is where my journey with him often ends. He doesn’t speak any further wisdom to me. I have nothing profound to walk away with. Nothing to change my life back to whole. Only an invitation to kneel by him and suffer beside him. To witness the pain on his face as he prepares to lose everything he has known in life. His friends, his family, his hopes, his dreams, his comforts. Only an invitation to hear his desperate whispers. To be still. And to know.
Most often I find myself praying to forget. Despite them being my fondest memories in life, they are what cause me the most pain. Those treasured moments burn like hot coals in the morning and keep me from sleep. If only I could focus on the troubled times, the hard parts, the things that didn’t bring joy. If only the worse times with her weren’t better than the best times anywhere else. I would gladly have the operation to remove every memory from those years. To go on with a hole in my memory where all my hopes and dreams once lived. Unnoticed. Unaware.
Grief is a sign that you loved deeply. And the deeper the grief the greater you loved. The greater you loved the more painful this unnecessary torture of life’s experience will be. There is no way around it but to feel it. And there is nothing good about what you will feel. It is too big to bottle up and hide in the corner. It is to grande, too much, to deal with in quiet rooms alone. It is evidence you are capable of huge love. And therefore, at risk for greatest loss. When love is in front of you the risk is worth every bit. When it disappears, and you feel the pain of generational loss, the gamble seems unfair.
I grieve because my heart was honest about my love for a person.
“Black care rarely sits behind a rider who pace is fast enough” Theodore Roosevelt
Though the luminary icon he was, Teddy Roosevelt, suffered great losses, as well as, great sadness. The history books are full of his wisdom, stories of adventures, and themes of perseverance and hard work. But the famous quote about outrunning the profound grief that plagued him was more a reflection of his hope to mitigate the pain than a success story of his escape from its prison. It did plague him his entire life, and it followed him into the mountains, down the rivers, into the plains, and at every turn in his personal and professional life. It led to feelings of insecurity, shame, and defeat superimposed onto his great victories. Depression is not a rider on a journey, it is the weather front we must ride through. We must ride through because there is no going back. The journey on the road of time has no turnarounds, no rest stops, only forks and bends, and ups and downs. What President Roosevelt illuminated in his honesty about his grief and depression, however, was the truth that the only real option is forward.
We lost what we loved the most. We woke up outside our world and watched it burn to the ground full of every hope and dream that we held so dear. The driving force behind every step, the reason for every morning, the joy in every night- gone at once. Depression didn’t show up behind us and jump on the horse, depression is space that exists outside our collapsed universe. It is the black hole behind the galaxy of your hopes and dreams. There is no outrunning the air you breath. It just is. And the depression that comes with grief is the air you will breath, like it or not, and we are assured to not.
In the initial moments of despair there is no way to find your bearings. There exist no compass for grief or this new world in which you find yourself living. Fear is unavoidable. It is scary. The air is heavy. It is dark. Chaos. During these initial moments, we have only a few limited choices in this regrettable life experience. First, we can try to stay put, roll up into a ball, stay in the moment, shelter in place. And we all do for a variable amount of time during the early moments of shock. But we might choose to stay right here hoping to be as near to that old world as possible. We accept our fate, so to speak, and wait for the monster to devour us. But the path of time will keep moving forward and every time you look up that old world, in its remnants of ashes and dust, will appear further and further away. You cannot stay near what was lost no matter how hard you try. Your reality is gone and what you replaced it with is not real- the world you will inhabit is the matrix of proximity to a world that no longer exists.
Second, you can exit this life. People hate talking about this, avoiding it and condemning it, but nearly everyone has found theirselves in a place of pain so great it seems like the most passionate and merciful self actionable option. It is not weakness. It is not a sin greater than any other. It is a moment in time where the human spirit has been so badly beaten that any spark of life has been snuffed out and no hope remains. And it demands compassion. An attempt to deter someone in such great pain that ending their life feels like the only option with the fear of eternal hell as punishment is useless. We are in hell. It feels eternal. And God has already taken what seems like great pleasure in punishing us here on earth. How many have called out to God before pulling the trigger. How many times has God stood in the way of that bullet?
We know that if we can get that rider back on their horse time will move forward and they will find enough hope to realize their belonging here on earth. We know that any persons absence in this world leaves a tear in the fabric of time that is severely underestimated by the suffered. And only love will help move them forward. And only moving forward will give them a perspective outside of the hell they are living in now and hope for a possible future. The person sitting in the ashes of who they were as a person is unrecognizable to themselves. They cannot see their value in this world. All hands on deck. Share your own spark of humanity with them until enough of their own light burns bright enough to see the path ahead. And if you, the reader, are in this place now- I love you. Truly. Do not underestimate what your absence would do to this world and to those that love you AND those who will love you. This option will fix nothing, it will only broaden the scorched earth that has befallen you, and pull others into the hell you will leave here on earth.
The only other option is to be the rider in the storm. That heavy dark cloud of black care is relentless, but the only road available is time, and the only way through is forward. Be the bison, lower your head, and walk head on into that storm. The most difficult thing in this moment is to love yourself. But you need that the most now. And you deserve it. As someone who has had great faith much of his life, and searched and believed in miracles, and still fears God and is certain of his existence- I do not see God in these moments. I don’t say that to suggest seeking God for strength is hopeless. On the contrary, I think it is often our only hope. But I say this because those who find themselves here should know that now is not the time for a dissertation on God’s involvement with mankind. It is survival.
I have no quote or scripture to end this essay today. I only have a heart for anyone hurting the hurt I have felt. The deep despair that is all consuming. The sensation of burning alive. Worse, watching the person you love burn alive and being unable to save them. No matter what, you have value and you belong in this world. You don’t see God? Look inside, there is a spark of creation there. You don’t see hope? You are the hope. You are loved.
Might I suggest that there was one bullet God did take for us- on the cross. And perhaps, though it’s hard to see now, the scene of that crucifixion will appear on the other side of this forsaken storm.
“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss
The haunting thick fog of depression that settles in through the cracks of our grief and loss and persists well beyond its welcome holds a horrific grasp upon our mourning. If you are looking for a more cheerful and motivating take on the suffering of this Black Care, today is not the day. Perhaps, tomorrow, a more helpful and hopeful essay on the rise from its clutches will evolve. But depression, the most massive stone that falls upon our hearts, mandates that an honest description precedes prescription. And for all its weight and all it’s persistence, there is much to say.
There is a cold and quiet shock after loss, that moment when you sit, somehow still inside yourself, while you shake in terror somewhere far outside your body. Every small background noise, once unnoticed, falls deafening upon your ears. Even your anatomy seems to shift in fluid form, melting: stomach into throat, tongue to roof of mouth, heart toward intestines, heartbeat into your eardrums, and eyes somewhere across the room watching. The amorphous mess you are in the suddenness of loss.
While every other emotional stage of grief seems to come and go, depression settles down upon you and fills your pores like smoke. When does bereavement transition into depression? Who cares- besides your therapist. These early moments, while the mind buzzes and ceases it usefulness, is when depression takes the opportunity to fill in all of the gaps in your shattered reality. While you deny, rage in anger, and bargain for your life back, distracted by the chaos, those blue devils are settling in for a long and lonely stay. Waves of every form of grief come and go from your shore, but this great sadness has anchored itself mercilessly to your soul.
As the shock slowly fades, and the flames calm to embers and ash, the cold empty version of you will be all that remains. How long must we suffer at this great affliction? Taste has abandoned your tongue, swallowing and deep breath become a conscious effort, focus will evade you at every routine task. Depression never brought a single answer, but a thousand questions. How? How can one person have the power to wreck my existence, my entire human experience? Why? Why would a loving God stand-by in our greatest time of need? Who? Who have I become in instant unawareness? When? When will this empty pain become tolerable? What? What will become of this broken heart? Job asked a thousand questions. But we don’t suffer as Job. For in his story, God finally answered, and restoration was paid for his obedience. No, our depression gathers at the corners of our lips as jealous anger toward Job and his loving God. What is depression? It is everything. It is you now. It is the eternal echo of the hammer against anvil reverberating off the canyon walls. It is embedded into your DNA to pass on for generations.
Nobody tells you that the depression that overlies our grief is a hungry beast. We feed it out of desperation, at first. The stage of mistakes- looking for a quick fix in another person, place, or thing. Later we make sacrifices to it- all things that once brought us joy. But hungry still we face it’s gaping fangs to wonder what might satiate this creature. Wise and shifty, depression never speaks, it introduces thoughts and feelings using your own voice. When it bears down upon us in this very moment and we hear those familiar words- “what I, Depression, crave to consume is you”- it is time to resist. With every last bit of self. With every hope you still might have in God. Resist. Depression doesn’t deserve your life. Somewhere you are something more than this beast upon you. Fight. Keep going through hell. One step at a time.
The very real fear is that in our grief we will become our depression. A cancer consuming every healthy cell. “[b]ecause wherever I sat- on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok- I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Sylvia Plath, the Bell Jar). It is an ever present air that we breath. It fits like heavy wet clothing. It is holes in your socks on a cold winter night. How do we resist it becoming our identity and following us to a welcomed grave? I don’t know. All I know is that what eventually feels the best is throwing everything back at it- striking that beast in the mouth. We have little control in this new world of grief. Giving up and letting depression define us is one more loss that we, perhaps, cannot afford. Look to the literature, the historical figures who suffered, your family, your God. Look back at that happy person you were before the Black Dog grabbed him by the throat. You owe him something. He has suffered more than he deserved.
