Monday
By God’s grace, I lived through the next few days. I made sure Mike, my mentor, was going to be with me that first Monday morning. I didn’t want to meet in a crowded, loud, obnoxious restaurant, and all restaurants seemed obnoxious to me. So, I had him over for breakfast at my house. It was the first of many breakfasts I hosted by my house. It seemed safer.
I don’t think I could face that first week alone. I needed someone to pray over me. I needed someone to be with me and try to make sense of life, because I couldn’t see any sense in it. I felt like a little boy lost in a grocery store, hoping his mom would come in and rescue him. I wanted someone to take care of me so badly, but there was no one.
It was good to have Mike there, but, of course, he had to leave. And then I’d be alone again. Alone is a house that made no noise. It was painfully silent. The silence didn’t comfort me or allow me “solitude,” it just reminded me of what I didn’t want to think about.
In some ways, I was in denial. I knew she was dead, and I wasn’t positive it actually happened. I was ambivalent, pulled between two opposing thoughts. She’s dead, I saw that, but there could have been a mistake somewhere. A mistake I couldn’t rule out. This was “emotional thinking” but it felt real enough. So, I was confused. My brain trying to digest the worst event in my life. And that black hole kept nipping at my heals, wanting to overcome me. I was fighting just to fight. I simply didn’t care anymore. I lost the plot.
There are times when I say God is good to me, and I feel it. And there are times when I don’t even care if there is a God, but he’s still good to me. I felt dead. Nothing. I think it’s these dark times when God shines the brightest, although I saw nothing soft or warm at that time. Everything had sharp right angles. He provided a way through it, I can see that now, but at the time it didn’t make sense. His consistent pursuit of me is why I’m here today. The pain was bigger than I was. And the pain overshadowed my view of God. But God was bigger than the pain, I just couldn’t feel it.
Later in the day, as I walked around the cemetery as stared at Deb’s new grave, I felt unattached. Deb was my driving force, the person I made all decisions with. I lived, in part, to love her. I wanted to please her. I wanted to enjoy her dreams. To go where she wanted to go. To get done what she wanted to get done. Now, nothing mattered. If I stayed in my basement and watched endless TV no one would care. Having no direction in life is, in some ways, a piece of hell.
The sun didn’t shine much, and when it did, it wasn’t very sunny.
I took that following week off work with the assumption that I needed to. Everyone told me I should “take some time off,” although I wasn’t sure what to do with that time. At home, I just sat there and felt terrible. All I could think about was her. She was so wonderful, so beautiful. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I loved the snot out of that woman. She was my world. Now, I was alone. Now I lived in silence.
Relief Options
The process of grief is the process of seeking relief from the pain. I can choose good options or bad options; either God’s long-term plan, or immediate relief that requires no plan. Good relief builds me up, creates a future for me, involves God, and has purpose. Good relief makes my patience muscle stronger, and grows my integrity. Bad options having me running to addictions that have a wide range of names. These include sports, sex, porn, workaholism, music, fantasy, video games, money, or a thousand other terrible options that tear my heart from my soul.
If I want to grieve with hope, God has offered three things to me:
- The Word of God
- The Spirit of God
- The people of God
These three gifts are the most precious gifts God has given me. With the Word of God, I can know the truth. I don’t have to worry if it is twisted to uphold a certain political agenda, it’s just the truth. And if its truth, then it’s stayed the same for the last 10,000 years. With the Spirit of God, I get to pray and grow to know Jesus personally, with all my flaws. And it’s the people of God that surround me and love me. They are broken, but their love for me is sweet. Their prayers for me are real and their relationship meets a thirst inside me I didn’t know I had. It’s not possible to do better than these three.
But, if I wanted immediate relief, I’d preoccupy my senses with fun and end up numbing my heart (so it wouldn’t get in the way of my fun). Grief is painful, and unless I can see the end of that pain, relief can become more attractive than God and his standards. Drugs work, at least for a few hours, but tend to destroy me and all my relationships long term. Alcohol numbs, and can be fun, at least for a little while, until the following morning. These options quickly enslave me in a cage of my desires, never satisfying, always making me want more. Eventually, these prisons will draw me into the darkness where I am willing to break any standard of morals to get my next fix. I hear these stories almost every day at prison. We are our own worst enemies. That’s easy to see in others, it’s painful to see in myself.
God will allow me to destroy my life and the lives of my loved ones if I chose. I’m my choice. But he is offering me life. He’s rather I bend my knee to him and surrender this struggle to him. He wants me to lay it at the cross where they will evaporate. And it’s at that cross that I find hope from my misguided attempts to extinguish my pain.
Children
The process of managing my mental health is the process of managing my stress. In many ways life boils down to managing stress. How I seek relief defines my character. It’s a spiritual battle of trusting God’s will verses finding a convenient god. If I seek relief through drugs/alcohol, my moral life will go into the tubes. As the addiction grows in my attempt to seek relief my priorities change.
We tend to specialize in escaping reality in our culture. It’s ingrained in our national psyche. “I have the right to make myself happy any way I choose.” It’s perfectly acceptable (in our culture) to bend moral standards to fit my desires (as if the desires are of higher value than my character). We justify our sin calling in “our right” and claiming the victim statement of “my wife died” as if somehow this justifies my sin.
This battle is real. I want relief. I struggle holding to my integrity. At times, even when I know it’s wrong, I’m willing to suspend my morals. I just want relief. It’s incredible how quickly I can go from praising God to smothering my faith. I am a wicked man with a wicked heart. Thank God for his everlasting mercy.
I have alcoholism in my family and know the dark path I could be swallowed in. I am a few steps from my own destruction once I get into a pattern of drinking regularly. Just because I’m not an alcoholic doesn’t mean I don’t have that capacity inside me to fall down that hole.
And there are times when didn’t care about the long-term impacts. I want, no “need,” relief. Don’t you understand? My wife is dead. My life is dead. My hope is dead. My future is gone. What could be more justifiable than hiding in a bottle? Who could blame me?
But I remember my children. I can’t go down that path. I couldn’t do that to them. Deb would never allow me to go down that path. Now, I have to remember my children. I am a dad. I am the moral leader in my family, even if I don’t want to me. I need to think of them. Perhaps that’s why I have so many pictures of my family around me house. It’s easy to remember there are eyes on me when I see my family. Life begins to make sense with them.
As these thoughts bump against one another in my head when I go for walks, I am realizing something about myself. I am able to have peace in my despair. The despair is a terrible, it’s something I have no control over, but knowing God is with me, makes the darkness less dark, and the pain gets small.
God is good. And he’s good to me (two different things). He wants to do something in my life. How could I turn my back on him?
I lay in bed and considered the choice of running away from pain. But how? How could I blow off my Jesus after he’s been with me all my life.