ChosenRebel's Blog

The Journey Into and Out of Sorrow

I find myself sighing. A lot.

There are triggers that I don’t completely understand. Driving, and the conversation will be in a lull and I will sigh. The color of a rock—a sigh. A childhood memory—a sigh—a song on a classic rock radio station, the name of my sister’s husband, some one speaks my sister’s name, the name of one of her children, and a sigh rises up in my chest and escapes my mouth. An emptiness descends. A vacuum is felt, my eyes grow heavy and a salty-tear craws out and down my cheek. And another sigh escapes.

What is a sigh?

Is it the Divine Designer’s release valve for sorrows too deep for words?

Is this what the writers of a previous century called “melancholy” and our own calls “depression”? Is that what this is? Is this what some call “survivors quilt”? Will this come to an end?

She no longer breathes air. Her death has created a hole in the firmament of the family, multiple families. I can’t concentrate. I sit down, look for my mug, . . . oh, it’s over there . . . I don’t want to get up and get it. I want to close my eyes and sleep.

My younger brothers, and my younger sister have all departed. The funeral over, they have driven or flown to their homes in New Jersey, Michigan, South Carolina and Massachusetts. Will and his family remain in Pennsylvania minutes from Mary’s family. I miss them all. My wife says that the closeness and love of my family is extraordinary. I can’t disagree. She’s driving now, my wife is driving us home. We will arrive in about 9 hours. I miss them all. I guess I just said that. And I miss her, my luminous, wonderful sister Mary, the central pivot of our family, and the central human pivot of her family, lives with Jesus now, which is magnificent, but she doesn’t abide with us and that is incomprehensibly horrible, even in the midst of and even because of our joy in the knowledge of her joy in the glories of heaven. How can these two things exist in the same space? Aren’t joy and sorrow opposites? Why can’t I shake this melancholy? Am I desiring something too soon? When will the feeling of “absence” end? (A sculpture that has taken on new poignancy and pain for me this week)

Questions.

Why are my thoughts so random? Why is my mind so blank? Why can’t I force myself to concentrate? Why can’t I respond to my wife’s banter? Wake up Marty! Wake up. Why does my daughter’s voice make me want to cry? We stop to rest and walk. I reach for my wife’s hand and her touch almost causes my heart to burst and eyes to gush with tears. What do these people do for a living? What is it like to live on a farm? Do those cows feel the cold? Aren’t their feet, their hoofs cold? Will they be out all day? I wonder when they left the barn this morning? This area is so beautiful? And it seems oblivious to the political turmoil of the nation. I wish I had another handkerchief. Someone should start a barn painting business, become expert it doing it fast, efficiently and cheaply. A state could become known for its beautifully panted farms and barns. It would become a tourist destination. National Geographic would do a long-form article filled with beauty and color.  There is beauty in these vistas but it also a lonely winter snowscape. “Lion’s Den Adult Superstore” billboard. What a blight on the land! What is adult about indulging adolescent hormones in over 30 year-old men? Could the state fine “Lion’s Den” for abuse of language? It is an oxymoron to call your store “ADULT.” The activity in your building is a cancer on the country. We label it a moral cancer. It’s called “truth in advertising.”

Probably not going to happen.

My gazes out the window are time in a man’s “empty box.” I see, but nothing registers. Time is moving too fast. Time is moving too slow. Tomorrow I have to “be present” with pastors who need care. “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3) I don’t want to be present with anyone. I want to be alone. “But your counsel to others is usually the opposite” says a whispered memory.

‘Most times, when we are in deep emotional pain, we don’t want to be around anyone but it is actually then when we need to be around someone. The trick is to be with the right one or the right people. But the best thing, is rarely to be alone. Avoid Job’s friends and fools like Job’s wife but don’t be alone.’

But I don’t want to take my own advice now that the shoe is on the other foot. Part of that is that experience has taught me that many friends, mean well but are struck stupid when faced with the shear granite face of sorrow’s mountain.

Something registers. Driving south on Interstate 81, three huge majestic crosses rise to point me to Jesus. The middle one must be 90 feet high! I want to thank the church for closing the “nothing box” and opening the “hope box” in a man’s compartmentalized brain. There’s a thought. Does a man’s brain become more like a woman’s when he is discouraged? Here in this joyless sorrow, everything seems connected to everything and nothing at the same time. Hope and thankfulness falls away upon closer inspection of the three crosses. I can now see two huge American flags behind two of the crosses. Why are American Christians more American than Christian? What is wrong with us? Why can’t people see that the melding of politics with the faith “once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 1:3) is a fool’s errand? Wake up church! Anger flares briefly and then collapses in to the abyss of despondency.

Are my brothers and remaining sister experiencing this? Is Eric? Is Charlie? Are his brother and sisters? Charlie did such a good job with his eulogy of his mother. His mom would be / will be so proud. Oh Mary, you raised him, them, well, my sister. You and Eric were such a good pairing. So glad you had one another. You loved people so well, and you delivered some great lovers to the next generation. The maturing and deepening of your faith in Christ as the sands of your time drained away was a beautiful contrast to the ravages of the cancer that took you from us. I have an increased interest in heaven because of the magnet of your life. I hope we all do.

Is it helpful to write these random thoughts down? Is it healthy? Could it help any of us, anyone, process the sorrows of pain and loss? Could it help me to move on and continue life in healthy ways? I hope so but I don’t know how. Maybe there is a kind of help in knowing that the cone of aloneness and defeat that descends on the sorrowful is not real. We aren’t alone. It just feels that way. He is here. Jesus is here weeping with us. Certainly, there is help in reminding our hearts that Jesus, who died and rose again and promised eternal bliss with Him, also wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He too has mourned. I need that reminder. My soul, our souls are leaky.  We are constantly leaking out truth, like a sink without a stopper. A leaky sink is not a testimony to the lack of value in the water that is lost and neither is a leaky soul testimony to the lack of value in the truth of the gospel. It is simply the evidence that both sinks and souls need either stoppers or a higher volume of water and truth to sustain their fullness.

“Lord Jesus, give us such fullness of truth-saturated hope
that the holes in our leaky hearts would be stopped
and that our souls as well as our eyes would stop leaking.
Make us in our loss not forget that You died and rose
that all who die in You will also rise to be with You.”

There it is. Another sigh.

A leaky sink is not a testimony to the lack of value in the water that is lost and neither is a leaky soul testimony to the lack of value in the truth of the gospel. It is simply the evidence that both sinks and souls need either stoppers or a higher volume of water or truth to sustain their fullness.

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