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.

How do we heal in the absence of closure?

As the old saying goes “Time heals all wounds.”, and in most cases, this is true. As we distance ourselves from a hurt we can begin to live and interact with less caution, to feel joy and happiness again. But it is easier to recover from an emotional or spiritual injury when we have experienced “closure”: Either an understanding/reconciliation reached with that person who has hurt us or, at least, some measure of justice. When we are not afforded reconciliation or justice after a hurt, we are left in a state of limbo, where healing comes much more slowly, much more unevenly, than if we are able to experience a definite resolution.

I liken the difference between healing with and without closure to the difference between the healing of a nasty cut that is cleaned up/stitched up by a doctor and a cut that is allowed to close up “naturally”. When the cut has been treated and closed, it will often heal faster, have fewer complications, and its scar will be less noticeable than an untreated, “unclosed” cut. Likewise, when we have had closure after an emotional/spiritual wound, negative emotions are less likely to fester, we are less likely to obsess over unanswered questions, and more likely to trust and rebuild relationships.

For those of us who do struggle with the uneven, messy scars of unresolved hurts, there is a silver lining: Because we didn’t heal as slowly, because our “scars” are jagged, uneven, and prone to aching in bad weather, we remember more. We’ve been there, done that, have the t-shirt. We might be a bit more disciplined in our interactions. We might be able to share our experiences more effectively. We might even be able to be more present for those who are experiencing a similar hurt.

But all the silver linings in the world don’t make these wounds less painful, do they?

. . .no, the above is not a description of a wine, but is instead of the pain inflicted by a sweat bee.

Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist, has been kind enough to create a pain scale for various sorts of insect bites, which can be found here. His descriptions are well-written and fascinating enough to distract me from long overdue blog posting.

Enjoy.