A post on Internet Monk (on how the church needs to be a place where we can find companionship in repentance) brought up some memories for me. I’d like to share one of them.
At the beginning of 2008, I found myself embroiled in some utterly horrific personal circumstances. Things were so bad, I still have difficulty making sense of it all. I had been wronged, and I had wronged others. I was both offender and victim, betrayer and betrayed.
(Never in a million years would I have thought that I would have done what I did, or ended up where I was.)
At one point, things got so bad that I had to take down this blog for awhile. This was a necessary, but devastating decision: This blog had become my lifeline. The one thing that I could do “right” at a time when everything was going so wrong.
I remember that cold January morning, several days after removing my blog, when I realized that I could no longer feel the presence of God.
(I overreacted, certainly, but in my confusion, rage and misery, I felt as though my life had been stripped of all meaning and purpose, and that included God.)
On the train to work, I realized that I was going to have to let people know that I was now an atheist.
(I was perplexed as to how such an announcement ought to be made.)
In spite of everything, I had the good sense to postpone broadcasting my infidel state: I was in the office for a few hours when an email showed up in my inbox. It was from fellow blogger Shula (aka Sensuous Wife).
(I didn’t know her well, but that didn’t matter. Shula knew that I was in big trouble.)
She wrote:
“If you’re in a valley, I hope you’re not in there by yourself. If you’re in a foxhole, I’ll crawl in there with you and sit a while.”
(She didn’t offer to heal me, cure me, or fix me. She didn’t offer rebuke or “the truth in love”. She didn’t try to motivate me into wholeness. She simply offered to be present with me in my pain.)
Sitting with someone who is in pain and suffering is a tough thing to do. It is a tiresome, painful, and upsetting process.
(And yet Shula was still willing to do it.)
Our instincts often tell us to “fix” the problem, or to encourage the other to “fix” the problem themselves.
(If only it was that easy!)
It’s hard to sit with someone who is full of pain and who can’t get beyond that pain or to take appropriate action: Particularly when that person bears responsibility for his/her circumstances. The temptation is so strong to just tell a person to “suck it up”, learn their lesson, and move on.
(As if being responsible for one’s own pain makes it any less painful.)
After receiving Shula’s email and offer of presence, we became friends. My behavior, thinking, and circumstances didn’t change right away, and in many ways, my pain (and behavior) became far, far worse before it got better.
(But I had someone with me. And she never went away.)
We can certainly make the argument that some people need to hear some “hard truths” to if they are ever going to change. I agree with this, and I am grateful for those friends who, during this bad time, confronted me with some of those hard truths.
But the fact that I needed to change didn’t nullify my pain, nor did it nullify my need for the presence of someone who could be my companion through this experience. Like most people in emotional pain, what I mostly needed was time to process, change, heal, and regroup.
(It took a bit more time than I thought I would.)
(But Shula gave it to me anyway.)
Thank you, Sister.
