Usually the title comes to me, then the column. This time, however, several titles seemed like they could work. You could argue that I’m merely trying to get your attention with this one. Only partially true.
Over a year ago I received one of the most shocking and heartbreaking phone calls of my life. I tried soon after to write about dealing with “the” news yet managed only to do so incoherently, at best. I have been processing it all this time through these columns- more than once I might add!
I have also been praying since that awful day. Sometimes all I could manage was, “Help!” Sometimes just groanings for which I could find no words. And the silence screamed. Sometimes “half-cocked and halting” prayers and “shooting shafts into the dark” as per Frederick Buechner. Yet prayers they were, which I believe led to a breakthrough this past weekend, the kind of which I could have never predicted.
When it came, it was like a huge weight had been lifted and not to sound too weird or anything, but it was almost as if a spirit of an evil nature departed. A stronghold, if you will, of bitterness and resentment the depth of which I wasn’t even fully aware. Within moments of this “release,” I wept and recalled some of the most powerful words I’ve ever read by C.S. Lewis:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possible be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
Surely this could never happen to me, I said when I first read this passage three years ago and every time it has bubbled up since. Well it did, and my dredging up the past and attempting to insure against future heartbreak made me undoubtedly the worst type of person. At least, at times.
I recently shared with my dear nephew a Henri Nouwen quote, “What is forgotten is unavailable, and what is unavailable cannot be healed.” I’m not sure we can truly forget the bad things that happens to us, but we do tend to justify our responses to them as well as numb ourselves in countless ways to help “forget” them – both of which are dangerous. And often involve lies we tell ourselves.
One of the biggest ones? “That could never happen to me.” Another? “I’m fine (thank you very much).” Yet another? “It’s not THAT bad,” referring to the pain and/or how we choose to cope with it. Although I have not been at all tentative talking about pain, I have been just that in talking about sin, which often results from coping with it! I’ve instead used terms like “bad habits,” “addictions” and my new favorite, “strongholds.” I really like what author Jacqueline Bussie encourages us to ask ourselves about such things:
Are they life giving or life destroying?
I dare you to ask yourself this question even if your friends say you don’t have a problem in a certain area. Whether it is regarding your drinking or recreational computer use; something as benign as a sport or hobby you love A LOT; or something insidious – and almost secret – such as cultivating bitterness and withholding love.
Other questions to ask are: do you have a healthy relationship with x, y or z; do those things change who you are (for the worse anyway); do they take you away physically – or emotionally – from the ones you love the most? Do they serve to build up or tear down your relationships?
We may not want to ask – or answer – any of these questions. Truthfully, that is. Our willing ourselves into a “better place,” however, only goes so far.
The bad news is we can’t do it on our own. It’s also the good news. We desperately need each other and, I believe, some One larger than ourselves… to free us from the lies we tell ourselves, to see each other in the light of our secrets and to love without fear. Without fear of heartbreak, rejection, abandonment. Free to love – and love again – with yes, “reckless” abandon…ourselves, our others, our Lord.
And that, my friends, is just about the best freedom there is.
Caroline Watkins
