Words have not come easy for me lately. At first I thought it was writer’s block, that dreaded contagion that prevents the words from forming in writers’ heads. But after a while I realized it was more than that. I’ve had plenty of words, they’ve just all been inadequate.
The reason behind it all, as best I can understand, is that I have been increasingly sad. These wintry seasons don’t come all that often in my life, as I am usually fairly optimistic. So I find weathering them a little difficult.
This season feels particularly stark. It’s as if I’m vicariously experiencing other people’s pains. I am drained by the fatigue of a single mom trying to work from home and raise a young toddler — who stopped napping three days ago. I’m drowning in the fear of a business owner who’s doing all he can to keep his business going in a down economy. And I am drawn to tears over the downcast tone in a soldier’s voice who’s about to return to the war.
Grief, I am discovering, is an emotion that rebels against verbal expression. While other emotions (like love, anger, fear, joy, etc.) generate whole new languages, grief is a black hole that sucks words back into itself. Even words of encouragement from others seem to collapse under their own weight and fall formless and powerless into the sadness abyss. So on I stumbled and fumbled, numbly searching for articulation.
A few days ago, my sadness deepened even more when I found out that a ministry colleague has recently been caught in sexual misconduct. He has been forced to resign from his church and teaching position in a local university over an event that happened many years earlier. Life, as he, his wife and his children knew it, will never be the same.
I hurt for everyone involved, for the children, for the marriage, for the broken trust and the painful secrets kept over so many years. I hurt for the abandonment that they will likely experience, as their pool of friends and acquaintances begins to turn over. I hurt for the reputation of ministers, and for Christianity.
What is there to say?
The corruption of sex — one of the most basic and beautiful aspects of being human — is an icon for the corruption of the whole of our existence. Things are not right. We know it in our core, without commentary or explanation. This life is not as it’s supposed to be.
It is a tragedy.
Then comes another unspeakably sad story — also involving sex — about someone’s friend who endured sexual abuse at the hands of a surrogate parent. Now an adult with kids of her own, she just discovered that this parent has sexually abused her own children. She has labored for decades, coping and overcoming, wrestling with forgiveness and working to create a life apart from the past abuse’s power. Now she has to do it all over again, only this time it’s different. And yet, it’s not.
It hurts.
I believe there is a theological, philosophical explanation to pain. I could articulate it, and have many times. I believe that a resolution is coming, someday; and the someday gives me some hope. But the explanation does not dress the wounds in our souls that lay exposed, throbbing and festering. Life, after all, is what it is. It is real, both in its simple joys and in its simply awful sin.
As a result, we are a cut, broken and hurting people. Words alone will not heal us — whether they are theological, political or ideological; no matter how well-intentioned or well-defended. Words alone will not protect us from the hurt that tomorrow brings.
I find myself (hopefully in the thawing of this profoundly winter season) back at the beginning again. I am confronted with the reality that there is only one thing that has ever brought any degree of resolution to life’s pain: Love.
Love is the only thing that heals and restores. It is the only thing that gives our words a context. The giving of love today animates our hope for tomorrow. Even love imperfectly given is effective and will do a good work. Love stops the vortex of pain and suffering.
As a follower of Jesus, I find myself observing a different kind of Easter this year. Sobered by sadness, I find my world in greater need for a risen Savior than I have in many, many seasons. I think I prefer it, in an odd sort of way. This year, Easter is very real, very earthy; it’s not chicks and bunnies, lilies and candy. This year Easter is more than a word — it is love perfectly given.
Damian–Only the afflicted can receive from the “God of all comfort”, and only they can share that comfort with others. I clearly sense the heart of a pastor in your writing here, the deep desire to love the wounded into healing and restoration.
Yet, I also feel that deep wounding is a gift, not given by a loving God, but transformed by Him into a sweetness that is the fellowship of His sufferings.
You are so right–words, even God-inspired words, are not healing. We can only walk alongside the wounded, but Jesus’ spirit can perform that transformation that we can’t begin to comprehend. I love Easter, too.
Macia – Thanks for your comments and insight. You speak as one who has walked through some seasons of winter in your journey.
I think you are right, in that our woundedness brings us into a place where we share in Christ’s sufferings. Though we don’t desire suffering and though suffering in and of itself doesn’t make us more spiritual, it has a way of stripping off the excesses, the unnecessary stuff that so often clouds our connection with God. It forces us to rely on God and his grace instead of our own capacities. That is where the “sweetness” you mentioned can be found.
Peace…
-d
Great post.
I think that Easter can’t arrive in its fullness without Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Ed. Note: Matt included much more to this comment that I thought was significant enough to include as a separate post: Profoundly Winter, a Response. Give it a look!