You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
 --  T.S. Eliot, "East Coker III", from Four Quartets

 
  I hesitate now to even speak of it, even less to write of it should writing and thinking about it give it more power than I ought to give it.  Yet therein is the rub that has rubbed me raw, the prospect that somehow, I have given it more power and that the darkness that consumes me has been fed by my hand. 

  Such is depression.  That dreaded D-word.  Not damnation, though it sometimes feels almost as bad as I imagine.  Not dung, though at times I can scarcely stand the stench of my soul.  Depression, not the economic kind-- the kind that once dwelt upon, can become a bloated spectre that blots out thought of anything else.  I am used to pain of physical kinds.  Right now I am nursing a bout of tendonitis in my left knee, and I am loath to rest it because I am just that stubborn.  But psychic pain is different and more difficult to deal with because there are no salves to reach the inner self, no massage to break open knotted nerves and downcast souls.  There is pain, and I am tired of it, tired and exhausted of waking, as Hopkins once wrote, "feeling the fell of dark and not of day."

  I am coming to see that the gradual arc of all that I have been writing and thinking has been the arc of someone slipping deeper into something he cannot dig himself out of.  Would that there were vaccines for this!  Would that medication would be enough!  Instead, there are only long moments of waiting, waiting for morning when you are almost sure that the night is all there is. 

  A large part of the fear in writing about it is that everyone will seek to offer good advice.  To be sure, I am taking all of it, and the prognosis is good because I trust that attacking instead of laying down is what I need to do-- but how many times can you hear permutations of "turn that frown upside down" and not get a little angry?  Yet here I write, hoping that you who are struggling like me might take a little comfort in reading words that are yours but not yours, and in thinking thoughts that are yours but not yours.  In a way, let this little, oft-neglected cyberspasm be for you a Lorax of the heart.  My name is the Lorax, I speak for the trees-- and for the selves that awake and are not sure they're still asleep.

  I have been depressed for a while, possibly over the course of the entire last year.  During seminary, I held it together in the name of meeting achievable goals:  get that paper in.  Ace that exam.  Memorize and synthesize and push push push.  But once seminary finished and I was cast into that nebulous task known as "ministry", my self-perception shifted.  No longer the open-handed student, the wide-eyed wonder, now the broken amongst the broken, the man whose helmet slips from his fingers as he watches his comrades fall at his side.  I went to Hong Kong last summer in hopes of remembering-- and was duly remembered-- but when I returned, the frustration, the anger of being as I am visited itself upon me, driving me into some deep places, places I had not known could exist in the human psyche. 

  And I do not use the term "psyche" loosely.  A student of Greek will tell you that it comes from the Greek word, well, "psyche" (pronounced "ps-oo-kay"), meaning our souls, our lives, our selves.  It is not merely my thoughts, but my feelings, my cognitions, my habits, my unpredictable inner jig with God.

  It was a hard late summer, autumn, and winter last year.  I thought of suicide once, and that alarmed me enough to seek counseling, something I have been regularly engaged in throughout the last year and a half.  Some who read this and who know me would say "why would you think of suicide?  Do you know who you are and what you mean to me and us?"  Even more, those who only see me on Sunday morning or leading a group would probably be surprised that I, the somewhat sought-after bachelor, the spiritual-seeming guy, the athlete, the scholar, the preacher, the speaker, the writer-- that this man would want to destroy himself.  But for those who have thought of it, you know that this is precisely the most difficult thing to realize when you contemplate it:  your worth.  I could only consider killing myself if I thought there was no one counting on me, no one loving me, and no one caring for me.  And still, I am strong enough in my self-monitoring and dead enough to my pride that upon realizing the thought was taking place, I sought help.  I reached out, perceptions be damned.  I was not in a good place, and I needed help.  The reverse is true:  I do have people who love me, who care for me, who think I'm the bees knees not because I contribute meaningfully to their lives, but because of who I am.  This is the truth that I still cling to as a tangible sign of God's pleasure in me.

  Months passed.  The dawn came and I felt better for a while, then went.  The last half year has been one crushing blow after another, such that each little thing, each little bump, has opened up wounds anew.  I was weakened in the early summer, and after a series of events and circumstances that I was helpless to control, I was left empty by early fall-- yet, apparently, not emptied enough. 

  It came to a head a week ago when, after being saddened by something I saw, I sank even further, and the pain became too much to bear.  I returned again to thoughts of ending my life.  Yet here is where a measure of grace breaks through:  I knew enough to know how severe it was becoming.  I had no real plan, and the momentary plan I had I knew would not really be enough and that I would probably make a mess of it.  It was not an attention-getting device, for I knew that many people were praying for me.  It was that I wanted the pain to end, to stop feeling so crummy that much of the joy of life was being systematically drained from me like a vampire bat latching onto the leg of a cow.  I realized then that many things had become difficult for me not because they were inherently hard to accomplish, but because the joy I had taken in them (yes, I am acquainted with lines of thought that we ought to "take joy in the Lord", but what I mean is that the joy I had was the joy of "feeling God's pleasure" as I did them) was gone.  Writing, running, reading, preaching-- it was all so difficult.  Most Sundays I put on a brave face and walked away wounded within, knowing that even though I had done my best to be honest about how I was feeling my way through some text, most people could not understand that I felt as though I was being torn apart by wild horses.  And it felt that evening as I sat, staring but not seeing, that the tearing was complete.  The night closed in.  I was alone.

  I struggled into bed at around 4 that night, and slept violently, hoping that the drink would finally work and that the pain would ease.  It didn't.  I awoke the next day with a headache and still wondering why I needed to continue in this pain.  I knew the arguments against suicide because it is, for some, a forfeit of your salvation, but whoever is considering it is not in a good frame of mind.  In fact, it is a psychic (that word again) illness, something I am not sure God's mercy does not cover.

  What kept me from it?  By dwelling on how much my premature, self-inflicted departure would hurt the people I love.  I am not a coward in the typical sense, but in the final analysis, more a lover than I thought.  I could not bear the thought of my parents having to bury me.  I could not think of my sister's face at the funeral.  The sight of my congregation's ashen countenances and self-recriminations about what more they could have done to stop it made me gag.  No, despite the pain, I knew I was loved.  Not just by God who seems so distant, but by real people and in real time.  I could not and cannot do it because I care too much for them.  I wanted to escape the pain, to finally be free of it, but not when it means burdening others with the questions and my pain, now magnified and diffused amongst them all.  I could not do it because I am loved, and in my little and halting way, I love them also.

  You who read this and are similarly depressed and deep in your isolation will ask "so what about me?  What about me whom no one loves, whom no one sees, whom no one remembers or cares for?" 

  I cannot answer you.  I don't know.  But I only know that you are in pain.  As am I. 

  A thought occurred to me as I lay there.  I had done everything I possibly could over the years to manage my stress in healthy ways.  I had been running four or five times a week, totaling up to 65k as I had trained for and completed my second marathon in October.  I had been eating well, aside from occasional indulgences in chips and beer (all right, all right, and dark chocolate and red wine) to enhance the experience of watching professional sports and/or cheesy mood-elevating melodramas.  I had, for the most part, been sleeping as much as possible and monitoring my stress levels.  But due to the circumstances of the months, the stress had gotten unmanageable, and my capacity had gotten overwhelmed.  I was seeing a counselor, but it wasn't enough.  I was being prayed over, but it wasn't enough.  I was talking my way through it with loving friends and family, but that wasn't enough.  For the first time, I actually began to wonder if something was physiologically wrong with me-- that the wiring in my brain had finally blown? 

  I didn't want to get out of bed that day, but I did, resolve strengthened to fight.  I would get medication, a thing I am reluctant to take part in because what I know of it is that it never cures one's depression, it only, in the words of a friend who had taken them at one time, "keeps you from bottoming out."  The issues that caused the depression are still there, the circumstances that feel like death by a thousand cuts still real.  Drugs were the one thing I hadn't been trying, the one way I had not been attempting to, as someone (thank you) has said for me, "rage, rage against the dying of the light."  I called some people.  They responded, and spent the afternoon and early evening with me, their very presence alone a comfort and reminder of why I had not ended my life the night before.  When they were with me, it did not have to be a lengthy existential discussion.  In fact, the most helpful thing I talked about that day was football.

  I got medication, but only as a last resort, a resort which I have yet to visit.  It sits in a bottle in my cupboard next to some Tylenol 3's I never took for gum surgery I had last year.  It sits in my cupboard like a safety net, in case the darkness gets too much and no one is answering their phones.  It is not as though I am disobeying doctor's orders to be on medication-- my doctor has only prescribed it as a measure at hand, one more resource to bring in while I wrestle, while I, it must be said, fight the good fight.  (at least, I hope this fight is good.)  My doctor and counselor tell me I am doing all the right things in managing it, this quiet, shadowy monster under my bed.  I am talking about it with close friends and family.  I am receiving prayer without responding to the obligation to pray for others (in other words, letting myself be ministered to).  I am in the counselor's office and our sessions have been more intense and aggressive:  I walk out feeling hollowed and clean, and though I often cry at these sessions, it is cleansing.  I have also stopped drinking alcohol and have moved onto warm milk with almond powder.  And, despite a nagging knee injury, I am still running and in the gym whenever I can gather myself enough for the act. 

  It is still difficult, though.  I hate the feeling of being useless, and now being down for the count, I am feeling even more useless as I want to be productive and useful.  At the very least, part of me whines as I rest, wanting to be the good shepherd and out visiting the flock-- until I force myself to remember that I am not the Good Shepherd after all.  Someone else is.  I have years upon years (I think) to work and play in the fields of the Lord.  Now is my time to work through the pain, to sift my ashes, to rise up against that most impenetrable of walls, myself.

  I took last Sunday away from my congregation and went to First Baptist, where I hoped to hear Darrell preach.  I bused downtown early last Sunday, feeling the nip of early winter air making my nose run.  My heart made a peculiar flop as I approached the grey stone church, for on the sign out front, I knew Darrell would be preaching exactly what God wanted me to hear that day:  "The Bright Morning Star."  It was a sermon I'd heard from Darrell at least twice before, and it was, in a strange way, exactly what I'd hoped he would be preaching again.

  In it, Darrell speaks of his own experience with depression and suicidal thoughts.  Unlike mine, his occurred at moments when things seemed to be going well, but the will to live was somehow gone.  It was on a leave from his church one night 28 years ago that he read in the last chapter of Revelation, "I am the bright Morning Star."  The appearance of Jesus, the insignifcant-seeming little pinpoint of light in the midst of so great a darkness, is the point at which the night is at its most complete, its deepest-- and yet at the beginning of its decline as the bright Morning Star pulls the day in behind it.

  It had much to do with what I was feeling.  As Darrell quoted Thomas Torrance, "John was left to bleach and rot on the rocks of Patmos."  It was the same with me:  I could theologize and say that Jesus had beaten death, that the resurrection had happened, that my faith was not based on an unfounded rumour.  But here, in the middle of so deep a night, where was the evidence of that great victory over sin and evil and death?  Should there not be some difference?  Some change?  Should the world not be different and things become well?  And, I asked along with Darrell as tears started from my eyes, should I also not become well?  I am tired of being sick.  Tired of being sad.  Tired of finding ways to manage my pain.  So tired.  Bleached and rotten and wondering whether I am forsaken after all.
 
  He said several key things that I am still holding onto.  The first is that Jesus is the bright Morning Star, and his appearance hails the end of the night contrary to all evidence that surrounds it. It is unbelievable that the night should end because it seems so completely overwhelming, yet this is the word of Jesus to us.  The second is that though I am often led to wonder if Jesus is true to his promises that the night shall end, the ferocity of the night does not negate the word of Jesus, it validates it.  This valley of the shadow of death I walk through is this deep and difficult not because the Gospel of Christ is that weak, but that the Gospel of Christ is that strong, and knowing this, the night does everything it can to keep it from coming in. 

 And finally, something new that I had not heard Darrell say before:  "no matter where you run, you will run into Jesus.  He has you in his hands.  You cannot outrun God."  We made eye contact a few times during the sermon, but I am never completely sure whether preachers see me or whether they gloss over my head.  But part of me wondered if this was what Darrell was saying to me in a tacit way.  He knows I am a pastor of my own church in Vancouver.  He knows I ought to be with my people on a Sunday morning.  Was I now burned out and running from the flame?  Was I now just another statistic, another young one fallen by the wayside as the night became too much, too deep?

  The night is deep.  The darkness complete.  Yet, and I hold this lightly, I am wondering now why Jesus has appeared to me.  I have neglected my life of "seeing" prayer for months now because of some very difficult and indigestible things that have been said to me because of it.  Yet last week, a new picture that I have been turning over in my head was given.  By reason of this post already being too long (and days in the writing), I may need to share it some other time-- yet it has been a constant source of comfort as I struggle, waist deep and helpless in dark waters.  I am only starting to see that Jesus has appeared because the night, I hope (but do not yet see!), is over, and the day is coming, the Kingdom coming, the hope of glory being revealed in everything now coming clear.

  I shook hands with Darrell after the service. 

  He said, "I saw you in the congregation."

  I said, "Yes, I thought you might have.  Good to see you."

  He said, "Good to see you too."  Then, he leaned in with that meaningful look I have often seen in his eye.  "Did it come through?"  he asked.

  "Yes," I said, thinking that he was simply asking whether God's Word had come through to me that morning.  Darrell, being the best preacher I know, is not known for being unable to deliver God's Word accurately and on time.  I had thought it was a simple preacher's question about how he did. 

  But later, when in my counselor's office and telling her of this, she rolled her eyes.

  "Don't you see?  He was talking to you," she half-laughed at my lack of understanding.  I laughed too, and smiled at the thought that Darrell was thinking of me even as he was preaching, and that the words I had taken and written so that I might not forget them were words that he was inspired to speak to me, the lost sheep, that day.  Yes, the lost sheep-- but even now as I write, strangely assured again that this ridiculous lost sheep cannot be snatched from the Father's hand. 

  That Sunday, I went to Chapters on Robson and browsed through books, feeling saddened by the prospect of entering so wide a market.  Yet my hands were led to the Complete Works of T.S. Eliot, and there, after a few flips, I read what I have reprinted above.  I felt, and still feel, that God is speaking to me not only through inspiring Darrell, but by the words of the poet.  These are watchwords for me even now in the night.  I am to go by a way I do not know to become what I am not yet.  To arrive where I am, I must go where I am not, by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.  The comfort is small, the light of the Morning Star so dim, the night so great and so cold.  Yet with what strength these palsied hands have, I will cling to these words, to these hopes.

  I have been wondering whether I ought to make this post public or not, but in the end, have decided to make it so.  Those of you who are in my congregation who are reading this now (and have read this far into the longest post I have ever written-- I'm sorry, but there is so much to say!  And in this instance, I think, you have been better served by a longer excursus than a brief one) I would ask of you to, for the moment, keep such knowledge to yourselves and not discuss it over Sunday lunch-- at least, not until I have a moment to speak of this honestly with the congregation at large.  We are not, as you know, in the business of hiding pain in our little podunk church-- but we need time to figure the best way to share such pain, since not everyone is capable of handling such things as sensitive as their pastor's psyche.  We will likely talk about it in public, but not before the time is right and the people prepared. 

  And for you, the casual surfer who has stumbled onto this, you will likely have read this far for one of two reasons.  First, that you are now wondering who I am and what sort of fool shares so intimately?  And I would answer that I am the only sort of fool who gives what he does not own, himself, and freely, so that you might in your own way be encouraged.  Or perhaps, you are in a second party--at the end of your rope and free-falling.  In that case, I am sorry for your pain.  I wish I could make it instantly better, but if I have learned one thing in the last while, it is that I am helpless and cannot even cure myself.  However, for what it's worth, I too am waiting for daybreak.  I too, am thrust into darkness.  You are not alone, for if you are cast down and waiting as I am, then, for as much comfort as this may bring us, we wait and suffer together in our separate agonies.  We each have our own crosses to carry-- and they are not light!  Nor is crucifixion painless.  But even as we are torn apart, perhaps we can hope together that somehow, somehow, we might attain to the resurrection of our deaths. 


 

 

  She once asked me what I did with my anger.  No, check that.  She once asked me what I did with my stress.

  "Go for a run," I said.  "Cook something.  Bake something.  Have a beer or glass of wine at the end of the day." 

  What?  You expected "pray"?  That's the "Mighty Man of God" answer, the "My-Isn't-He-So-Pious" answer--not the honest answer when you're out of prayer like you're out of coins at the laundromat and you still have a load of dirty underwear to go.  When I'm stressed, I do anything I can to avoid meeting that stress head on.  I'll watch a movie.  I'll play Kongregate for hours.  I'll daydream of flashbulbs and Oprah and black tie dinners for having "made it" as a novellist.

  This highlights how I've tended to deal with anger-- mostly unhealthily.  Conventional wisdom says that we need to channel our anger effectively, but what if you don't know what you're quite angry about?  What if, as they say depressed people are, that anger is most keenly focused upon yourself?  In these cases, I'm not sure how I can channel my anger effectively.  So in recent days, I've been trying something new-- mostly, at her suggestion. 

  "So what are you going to do with all these things you're feeling?  This anger?  This guilt over this anger?  This disappointment?  This sadness?"

  "I was going to just let it pass," I said, hoping that for once I wouldn't be lying when I said I could let things pass after all.  "You know, try to let it go with time..."

  She leaned forward, her bright blue eyes twinkling over the tops of her dark brown glasses.  "Oh yes.  That's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"

  Touché.

  So I began thinking more seriously about other ways of handling negative emotions, and the one way I have not tried is to meet it head on by talking it out with the people whom I say I'm in community with.  Yes, that dreaded 'c' word that becomes so meaningless with repeated use, but with care, becomes a concept that, because we are all in Christ, needs to be worked out carefully and, in cases like these, sacrificially.  And sacrifice, I need not tell you, is always painful.

  Part of me railed against the idea from the beginning.  Who was I to bother other people with my difficult emotions?  Wasn't everyone just going to get along nicely without me rocking the boat and speaking the truth not only of other people (as I am becoming used to doing) but, for once in this rickety life, to speak the truth of myself?  Perhaps this was all a very "cultural" thing where the dictates of harmony and immediate peace outweigh the stresses of confrontation and addressing the problem as what we always envisioned adults to actually be like?  (The irony, of course, is that adults almost never work this out.  I always thought that adults did the mature thing until I became one and realized I almost never do.)

  So I did the mature thing:  I sat on it for a few days.  And in those few days, I felt my pain subside just a smidgen.  Why would I disturb the scabbing process taking place over my heart?  Well, because I wasn't being emotionally healthy and I knew it.  I was severing lines of communication and openness for fear of discomfort.  I was squashing a tidal wave of powerful emotions because I was afraid of what I might do and how I might do it.  Repression isn't the right word-- though I probably have done that in the past.  Repression implies I don't know it's there and it comes out in a tumour somewhere else in my character.  No, this was just good ol' bottling up the pain and hoping something good comes of it.

  Nothing good came of it.  I was being oversensitive to everything, every little slight, every little comment.  It was hurting me to keep sitting on it like a hen incubating a snake egg that will hatch its own doom.

  So I went and tried to do the mature thing.  The "adult" thing.  And man, did it hurt even more.  My instinct is not to talk about it at all, but because I was hoping to actually live out what I teach when I talk about reconciliation and mediation, I knew I needed to go through it.  Not just so that I can tell others "yeah, I've done that" and so give myself a little street cred when it comes to working things out in community, but for my own sanity I needed to breathe deep and plunge in. 

  I wish I could say that I said everything that I really was feeling, but so much of what I was feeling was a confused jumble that half of what I was saying was awry.  Yes, I was angry but no, I wasn't angry and you but yes, I was angry at you, but no, I wasn't, so I must have been angry at myself, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes...

  The cumulative effect of all this has been that I have opened up even more cans of worms.  I feel a bit like a raw wound, but there's maggots in it cleaning out all the necrotic tissue, giving me an even chance at healing well.  What I fear is mostly for others as I wonder whether I have handled such difficult and volatile emotions well.  It would have been easier, after all, just to leave it.  Not to say anything.  To smile and gasp "I'm all right, Praise the Lord."  But that would have been dishonest, and it would not have silenced the sarcastic quip that rattled about my head:  "Yes, that's worked really well for you before, hasn't it?"  No, I needed to forge on.   Perhaps I am being selfish in expressing pain in a semi-public way.  Perhaps I was taking too big a risk in believing that others could hear such complex, negative emotions come pouring out of me.  Most people don't know what's going on, but they know I'm in pain, and so they pray:  "Oh God, help my moody, oversensitive pastor.  Help him feel better soon, because when he's depressed, it makes me feel sad too.  And I hate feeling sad."

  All right, so they probably don't pray that way.  They're probably a lot more mature about it than I think they are.

  Handling these negative emotions well and living in emotional honesty, well, sucks.  I know from a purely theoretical standpoint (in the same way I tend to know the approach of the eschaton-- with a fair level of certainty) that this is the way to go.  But after talking it out, not only do I feel as though my anger has been misplaced in several instances (leaving me with the tortuous question, "just who am I angry at anyway?"), but that I have also opened up wounds in others.  I hate that feeling, but then I also need to keep in mind that I'm not necessarily responsible for other people's feelings.  That doesn't mean I have carte blanche to be an asshole, it just means that sometimes, even when I do my level best to be as honest and as collected as I can be, I am likely to be treading on hearts from time to time. 

  Someone characterized it as me "lashing out".  It stung to hear it, though that's probably closest to the truth.  Yet it didn't feel like lashing out to me.  If I was just lashing out, I would have not tried to watch what I was saying nor even bothered sitting down with people I'm trying to love.  (yes, love.)  Me lashing out is me swearing profusely and walking out the door.  Me lashing out is going with personal attacks.  This is not me lashing out.  This is, as far as I can possibly help it, me trying to communicate that I'm chock full of shitty-ass shittiness.

  I don't know how this ends yet.  Maybe you'll never find out either.  I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to place emotion to circumstance with a greater degree of accuracy than I have been (i.e.:  "I feel _________ because of _________"), but I sort of doubt that I'll get that far in any appreciable near future.  Instead, what I have left is a muted maelstrom of difficult feelings-- of feeling sad, of feeling angry, of feeling, well, yucky-- and what I have to be content with is the knowledge that somehow, some way, this is me getting better. 




 
 

  It's been so long that I had to try a number of times to get my password right. But I figure my readership has died down enough now that few would actually see this post, thus making it what it once was:  a semi-secluded spot to puke uncontrollably from fear and discouragement.

  I didn't think I'd ever come back here.  There wasn't any point.  Either some people gave too much of a shit when I wrote, and most everyone else couldn't give two shits if I did.  That leaves a shit in between, which pretty much sums up where I am these days.
 
  It was a terribly tumultuous summer, both inside and out.  It never ceases to amaze me that most folks think "oh, everything's fine" when they see me on Sunday morning or another context.  You know what that is, though?  Because when all is said and done, I'm a fucking professional, and it's not about me in circumstances where my personal problems are causing me to bleed dry from within.  I cannot striptease my pain in front of the flock because there are only a few who would understand--and, unfortunately, a few who would be sent into valleys of their own because they are the ones by whose hands I have suffered.  So I will not let them know.  I will only swallow the pain as I swallow painkillers.  I will hide behind my blandest smile.  I will mouth platitudes.  I will offer prayer.  But within, I am rotting away; my bones know no soundness.

  There are stories of how C.H. Spurgeon would get peeled from his bed by his church elders so that he could get up to preach, then would return to his bed once the service was over.  It wasn't exactly like that for me, but were it not for friends and yes, professional counselors, I don't think I would have bothered to leave my apartment at all.  The thing about being self-aware is that you end up doing whatever you can to divert deeper depression:  you keep exercising, you eat as best you can, and you try to get enough sleep.  But sometimes, it's not enough.  I've been taking sustained beatings over the last few months in many different ways, and it's still not all good.  In fact, over the last few days, I've been in the absolute shits.  I've realized in the last few months that I'm actually very good at hiding stuff when I want to, and, more frighteningly, awesome at playing the I'm-so-fucking-happy game.

  I slipped this summer.  Many times.  Into depression, out of depression.  Sometimes wondering why the hell I need to get up at all.  Sometimes wondering what the possible use of soldiering on could be. 

  I tried.  I tried!  I wanted and desired and prayed.  I don't think I ever wanted such a thing as I did when I prayed for this, the change of my wounded heart.  It was secret, it was furious, it was the work of a mountain lifting up its skirts and planting itself in the sea.  Yet, my cold heart warmed too late, too late.  So I am left behind, left alone, left holding the bag-- again.  The moment when my heart of stone became a heart of flesh is exactly the moment when it became vulnerable to being torn apart.  Story of my fucking life.  Why have a heart of flesh at all?  Is it not better to be what I have projected myself to be:  a stone monolith--uncaring, distant, yet strong?

  What for?  What for, this new pain?  Were it to make me compassionate, I mayhap would smile and say "good good", but all I feel now is bitterness and all that comes out of me is groaning.  Were it to cleanse me, as some had thought it would, all this has done is scar me even more deeply-- a surprising thing, since I was not aware of how open I had become.  What was all this striving for?  For naught, I should say, and even less than naught to a terrible hurt that I do not know what to do with.  Pain, pain, go away, come again another day.  Every day I wake up and am in pain, and the only way I know to alleviate it is to medicate mind and body.  And yes, I know you don't know what this is about, but I do, and for now, that's enough.  No one can know the seemingly innumerable hurts I have gone through in the last year, and even if they do, no one understands how I have processed them and felt worn down by every single stroke of the lash.  The first I could stand.  The second tingled.  The third I could feel my skin break.  By the tenth, I am left an incoherent, gibbering mess; sobbing into my wounds and begging for it to stop.  Enough! 

  I don't know why I'm writing here.  Maybe it's because I've written through the last dozen or so pages of my journal complaining to God.  Maybe it's because I spend every morning feeling my tongue curl with curses; and at night when I drift to sleep, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth in sorrow.  Maybe it's because most of my friends probably couldn't stand a sustained barrage of f-bombs as I am prone to use when I'm angry or tired or discouraged or, in this case, all three.  More likely, it is the revelation of pain that most cannot stand.  You know, I think I just figured out why I'm writing here:  it's because in some weird way, it helps to have someone bear witness to your pain.

  I said as such to Cousin Ted and my buddy Phil last week when I held them in confidence.  I have other friends whom I may call, but I am afraid that they might be exhausted by the difficulty of caring for someone they love and so lapse into explanations.  It is not as though I really want theological answers that explain it all.  I can come up with enough myself!  It is the counselor in me remembering that this is my shit, and even though others are trying to walk with me, it's still my problem, not theirs.  They cannot bear my pain for me.  Only I can.  In that way, I am alone.  But all can bear witness, and this, dear reader (if you have read this far) is the boon I ask of you today:  bear witness.  I am laid low and silent, a shiftless shadow wandering the halls of Sheol.  Voiceless.  Sleepless.  Formless.  Bear witness!  I am a worm, not a man.

  I don't want theological answers.  I want to be loved through this, borne up by the reassurance of God's love for me.  God is good, you say?  Then I need proof!  I have felt the care of God in some ways:  if not by dint of my own flattened will, that struggles to rise like a prizefighter from the mat, then by the attendance of others to me; angels incarnate, those bearing the salve of pity and understanding.  Mockers say "oh, does the little boy need his pity party so badly?"  And I say "yes.  Only heartless bastards do not know what it means to live with a broken heart."  I have lived with mine for so long that very often I feel only as a quarter of a man, not even half-a-man, a speck of what I think I should be.  This long grief, this long sorrow-- it does not kill you, but it shrinks you, pulls you down into the corner of some dark box where there is no warmth and no light.

  I have only begun to ask the most dreaded question we all must eventually ask of our pain:  where is God in all this?  And for me, the pain is still too near, so I can only throw up my hands and say "hidden".  I wish it were as simple as feeling the comfort of His presence, but now, there is nothing.  Only the hum of my refrigerator and more silence beyond.  I do not know where God is in all this, because right now, it feels as though He is not in it at all and that He is asleep or uncaring.  And perhaps that is the best thing I have written thus far:  that perhaps God was not in this at all-- yet what I hope for is the redemption of this suffering.  Maybe not on this side of life, for it may well be that I will weep out the rest of my days, but maybe on the other side, when I am raised anew, all of the way this sorrow has carved me out will prepare me to become a vessel of some greater joy.

  I can only hope.  Right now, after having spent the evening doing my damnedest to drink myself into a stupor and then found, to my dismay, that my tolerance is much better than I thought it was-- this moment, I can only breathe.  And each breath draws the darkness nearer.  Yes, darkness, you are my closest friend.