Destination Discipline

I think everybody’s weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be ashamed or embarrassed of it.

Johnny Depp

I was talking to someone the other day that I don’t particularly like. I don’t particularly dislike them either which means they must be a co-worker or someone in the grocery store or the receptionist at the doctor’s office who never smiles. Yes, I am being intentionally vague in order to protect the “innocent”.

I was whispering so as not to trouble passersby with our conversation, but also because we were discussing something unseemly. Suddenly the person I was talking to shushed me.

I said, “I’m already whispering.”

She said, “Yes, but you are a loud whisperer.”

But the problem was, I was so full of beans that even though I lowered the volume of my whisper, the beans insisted on coming out of my hands and arms and eyebrows. As I gesticulated wildly my conversant squinted at me as if to indicate how inappropriate I was. I walked away feeling foolish. Why is it I can’t behave like normal girls? This is a question my mother has been asking since grade school and I finally know the answer. I came from her body! It’s her fault! (but hey, at least I don’t whistle in the grocery story!)

Still, it is difficult being weird. If I’m not crushing societal norms with my loud whispering, I’m blurting out things that shouldn’t be said at all. One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 is to be more intentional with my tongue. I want to keep confidences, be kind, and not scream at my children. But every time my 10 year old son gets into the shower he obliterates the last item on that list. No matter how many times I tell him he’s going to start paying the water bill, he doesn’t respond unless I holler like a barred owl during mating season.

And while it might seem easy to be kind to strangers, there’s always some speed demon who has to cut in front of me in traffic only to stop and make a right turn so abruptly I almost crash into him. This makes me realize that I may not be a nice person even though I play one on TV.

My insecurities are only heightened by friends and relations who don’t respond to phone calls or text messages. Are they angry or busy? Are they both? Should I continue to text and leave voicemails or are they purposely avoiding me? At what point does my pursuance constitute stalking? Should I begin pranking them by calling from strange numbers? Or should I just start telling people I won the lottery. I bet everyone would answer the phone when I called then.

More difficult is that I have recently been tasked with keeping a very important secret. Yet everywhere I go I keep telling people the secret. I will be in the process of talking like a normal girl and then it just slips out. So I end up telling the person I’m talking to that they are they only one I’ve told and if they tell anyone I will know it was them which means I will have to kill them. Which is why I’m having nightmares, because I’m terrified I will be forced to commit mass murder in order to maintain my reputation as a trustworthy individual.

So in addition to all of the “mom” guilt and “wife” guilt and “I-skipped-church-because-I-was-legitimately-sick” guilt, I can’t even keep a simple New Year’s resolution, which only gives credence to the theory that I may be a bonafide hypocrite. My pants already know this. Every time we meet in the morning they say, “Hey, Hippo-crit!” so I stick my tongue out at them and pull up my control-top pantyhose. Because it’s fun to pretend I’m a sausage.

Adults like to ask children what they want to be when they grow up. Well, I want to be normal. Or at least I want to drive a Barbie car. I definitely want to have more courage than the cowardly lion, more discernment than a guinea pig and the ability to touch my nose with my tongue. But since none of those things is likely to happen, I can settle for NOT being the schmuck who forgot he was the editor for the Wall Street Journal(and not the National Enquirer!) this week.

I met a woman in the office the other day that I have corresponded with but never met in person. She sized me up as she shook my hand. Then she said, “Margaret, you are not at all as I pictured you in my head. I assumed you would be old and matronly.”

Even when people can’t see me I’m weird. Seriously! It’s not easy being weird.

4:00am. Pain flashes through the neck and scalp and the heart begins to pump like a herd of galloping buffalo; heavy and hard. The heavy, woolen blanket of depression remains, not so much in thought as in tangible manifestation. It has been smothering me for a few weeks now–like a python slowly digesting a meal. I know it is eating me but I refuse to be consumed.

Few will know because I don’t want pity, or comments that do more harm than good. They want to heal but they don’t know how. I don’t know why “I’m sorry you feel that way” feels like a curse. It’s so much easier to throw my shoulders back and use what little energy I have to smile and laugh. I will cry in private. Especially when I accidentally drop a glass and it doesn’t shatter.

Innocence is a Myth

My husband showed me the video. A mailman lay on the ground screaming while a vicious dog tore and tugged at his body like a wolf murdering a helpless calf. An old woman with a broom tried to beat the dog away but it would not let go. A man threw a trash can on the dog but it would not relent. Meanwhile the mailman screamed. It seems an apt notion of everything wrong in the world.

We may not think we need to take time to deal with the horrors of living in this world, but we do. Maybe we think we can ignore the hawk eating the gosling or the child predator beheading the boy who only wanted to look at toys while his parents shopped. We might think it doesn’t affect us, but our innocence has been slaughtered.

It’s good to be sad about sad things

I think depression is a reminder to stop and process the grief.

We rage against the senseless ache of depression because it interferes with daily life. The email must be processed. The meals must be made. The children must be bathed.

So we settle for another distraction. We binge watch the super heroes destroying the villains. We bake a pan of brownies and eat until we are sick. We have so many treacherous coping mechanisms that do nothing to actually heal us.

We are embarrassed to weep because weeping is a sign of weakness.

I push for healing like a machine pressing out parts. Input steel, output structural beam. I build a fortress of solitude and safety so how come it turns into a prison? The windows have bars but I don’t remember building it that way. I decide to make languishing an art because maybe it’s stylish to pout. But even this is meaningless. A chasing after the wind. Because I remember laughter that isn’t forced; the giddiness of a glad heart. Then I’m just angry.

But this is good! Anger is a wonderful beginning because it forces the heart to push the blood. And we all know the blood carries the white blood cells to the wounds so they can be repaired.

Waiting is Beautiful

I resolve to grieve well while I wait. I allow myself to cry. I invite the sadness to stay until it is done. I know now that I just need to really process all the pain so I can truly heal. No more pressing parts through my machine. Maybe hope just needs to go to hospice…and die.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. you heard me say to you, I am going away, and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” (John 14:27-31 ESV)

Elisabeth Elliott wrote in A Path Through Suffering, “I know of no answer to give to anyone except the answer given to all the world in the cross. It was there that the great Grain of Wheat died–not that death should be the end of the story, but that it should be the beginning of the story, as it is in all the cycles of nature. The grain dies. The harvest results. The sun must die in the west if it is to rise in the east. The crimson touch must be found even in the fresh shoots of the baby oak–they are destined for death.”

So the seed splits so that new life may grow. And the shoot is lovely.

That is why I love the amaryllis bulbs that I hide in the dark corner of my basement. During the coldest, melancholy months of the year, I pull them out to find the seed has split and a bud shoots forth. The rapturous explosion of color is a reminder that death is the beginning of something glorious. But one would never know that in the fall when one digs the cold, brown bulb out of the dirt to put in a pot.

Right now the months are cold. The sky is dark. The flesh is weak. Sadness is a cloak about which I am inherently swallowed. And while distractions abound, I am not lost in them. Because I think there is something wonderfully hopeful about depression. God is showing me that even when I am sad, the soft touch of new, freshly washed flannel sheets against cold skin is healing. When I am weak, the scent of mulberry candles tickling my nose is a touch of gladness. The little, brown wren flicking his tail in the early afternoon sun sings, “Don’t lose heart!” And the bright blue sky shining like a gem–the most overt prism in existence–is a promise that one day the Son will avenge all our sadness in a burst of glorious light with the heavenly host of angels behind him. And the prince of this world will no longer rule–not even in hell.

Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
 Bless Thy little lamb tonight,
 Through the darkness be Thou  near me,
 Keep me safe 'til morning light. (Mary Duncan)

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” King Solomon – Proverbs 4:23

I sat down next to my friend and put my arm around her. To say that she looked awful would be an understatement. Her blotchy face and asthmatic sounding gasps were only a few of the physical symptoms of her grief. Her shoulders rose and fell with the sounds of sadness and I struggled with how best to comfort her. When I tried to put my arms around her, she flinched. When I leaned away to give her space, she grabbed my hands to pull me close. She opened her mouth to speak but no words formed. It was as if her lips were the gateway to a pit of anguish so deep that not even a single plea for assistance could escape.

A mockingbird has recently taken up residence near my home. She has been visiting the suet feeder that hangs outside my kitchen window. This bird is curious and intelligent, so unlike the boisterous Starlings who fight and screech for a mouthful of food. The mockingbird delicately scoops each bite through her beak even as she casts a furtive glance in our direction. She is wary but wise; knowing exactly when to fly away when we get too close.

This morning I let my boxer dogs out into the backyard before dawn and startled her. But instead of flying away she held her ground. She perched on the chain link fence—well within reach of those dogs—and squawked with all her might. She seemed to say, “This is my backyard and you are interrupting my breakfast!” I stepped back; fearful that she might try to prove her point by attempting to peck out my eyes. I marveled over her feisty behavior. What courage!

In the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes, “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” He then writes about the longing he experienced for his young wife as he languished inside the concentration camp. “Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.”

He then wrote something I found to be very profound. “A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Viktor Frankl’s wife perished in a death camp and he never saw her again, but he wrote one of the most important books about finding meaning through suffering that has been written.

My friend confessed to me that she had given up on life and I knew I had to response. I could not say something cheery like, “Now, now. It’ll be all right” or “Come, My Dear. Don’t you know the sun will come out tomorrow?” Her tears were filled not only with salt, but with frustration, bitterness, and despair. She looked to me for an answer and I knew her life depended on what I had to say.

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:6-8

The Apostle Paul wrote the book of Romans on his missionary journey to Corinth with the help of a man named, Tertius. Its main objective was to show that salvation may be procured by the gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ. So what does this mean for my friend, whose heart is broken—seemingly beyond repair?

If we believe the bible is true, we learn upon reading it that Jesus was God. His love for humanity knew no bounds. He had a beautifully perfect, imperishable body, but he gave that up to become human. He walked among us, entered into our suffering, and eventually died in order that we might be saved from eternal death; separation from God forever because of our sin (unbelief). He did this because he knew we could not save ourselves. Put simply; he did this because he loved us.

I often take this kind of love for granted. I think to myself, “Jesus was God. It was easy for him to suffer.” But this is not actually true. It took immeasurable courage to give up an immortal body and to put on a perishable body that got sick, felt cold and heat, experienced pain and sadness, and was eventually tested with the worst kind of physical pain imaginable. Because He did this, we can experience His help and comfort in times of pain, sorrow, grief, and most importantly, death. He knows our weakness and His desire is to save us from it.

I sat next to my friend and tried to hold her while she pulled away. How does one console a friend whose hurts are this tremendous? How does one speak truth when the words are like spitting rain on a forest fire of pain? How does one breathe life into lungs that can’t catch their breath?

We weep and we pray and we tell the truth.

“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

John 11:25-26

I spoke this truth to her with all the ferocity of the mockingbird. And then I wept and prayed some more.

Vikto Frankl wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Each of us has a choice to make when the waves of suffering overwhelm us. We can choose death or we can choose life. Many of us choose an anesthetic, thinking distraction will make the fundamental problem go away. Alas, to make no choice at all is to choose death. Because if we do not choose Jesus, we can never truly live.

My friend’s story is still in progress. I continue to watch, wait, and pray. Maybe she will even read this and find courage that compels her not to quit. I hope so. And until then, I will sing like the Mockingbird.