Lose, Love, Live. Dan Moseley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      When I visited people in the hospital, my body cried out in rebellion. I found myself avoiding the leadership responsibilities of my job.

      Finally, I chose to leave the congregation that had mentored and nurtured me and that I had served for over twenty years. I chose to leave the profession of pastor, which had sustained me and given me identity for over thirty years. I chose to leave the city in which I had discovered my skills as a minister and where I had offered them as a gift to others. I chose to lose much more after facing losses over which I had no choice.

      Only then did the full effect of the losses of my life come crashing in. As I moved to a new city and became a professor at a seminary, I began to spin into chaos. As the relationships that had sustained me through the crises of my life ended, I was left naked and on my own. I could no longer avoid my feelings. I could no longer pretend that life would be the same. I discovered the terror of not knowing who I was.

      I discovered raw empathy. Susan Wiltshire, in her book about her brother dying from AIDS, describes a broken heart as like a broken biscuit. When torn in half, there is twice as much surface on which to spread the butter and honey.² I discovered that a broken heart also has twice as much surface on which to spread the pain and grief of others. Whereas I had been able to protect my heart by playing the role of pastor, I now had no such protection. While I was able to draw on the strength that people projected on me because I was a “man of God,” now I was just Dan. I had no presence to offer but my own, and the pain that others felt tore into my flesh. It was then I began to realize the truth of the statement “Life after all is fair. Eventually it breaks everyone’s heart.”

      I found that our hearts are attached to familiar, dependable relationships and that when these change, by accident or by choice (it matters not), the heart gets ripped apart.

      In the midst of this time in my life I began to reflect on my own journey—to discover if there was anything in this pain and loss that could help me understand and live life better. My heart had been ripped open, and the wounds of loss were raw. Sadness consumed me. The sharing of the Lord’s Supper, where brokenness and suffering are central, became a much richer and more powerful worship experience. Shed blood and broken body became visceral, and I felt shared pain with the One remembered and with the people in the pew beside me.

      I yearned for comforting, for warm light to anoint the wounds and to heal me, for the suffering to ease and for hope to visit my heart again. I wanted to believe there was light coming in through the tears of my heart, but I didn’t know how to get through the pain to discover that light.

      As I looked at what I was doing with my life, I grasped the truth of the poet Jack Gilbert, who said, “We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.”³ I realized that the life I had created was no longer the life I could live. I had learned a particular way of naming reality. The people and actions of my life were constructed in a particular way, creating constellations by which I named them. The constellations were named husband, pastor, father, and son. But as life’s structures disappeared, I was unable to name myself and was left looking at a black sky with millions of stars. I could no longer see the constellations—just the stars.

      Dim Lights

      I found myself slowing down because I didn’t know who I was anymore. When I experienced the loss of my wife, my dad, my job, and the community I had called home, someone turned off the lights in my life. When you can’t see very well, you don’t move as fast.

      The lights don’t go off all of a sudden. Sometimes when one experiences a painful loss, there is a sudden burst of bright light. Sometimes when one inquires how a person is doing soon after the death of her husband, the answer may be, “She is doing amazingly well. She’s taking care of business.” Painful loss often produces a spurt of energy and clarity that one seldom experiences in the normal routine of life. Adrenaline rushes through our system, which insulates us from the pain and energizes us to endure the stress produced by the loss.

      For most of us though that light begins to dim when our energy runs out. The energy required to deal with the immediate need to simply hold on and create some temporary stability is soon depleted. The clarity provided by the immediate tasks soon fades as the fog of unknowing descends upon us. We often find ourselves sleeping much more than we did before. The dark of sleep is much more welcoming than the light of reality that faces us.

      This slowing down is very much related to the inability to see where we are going. It is very much like the descending sunset and the emerging dark of night. We find ourselves drawn to the immediacy of the present by the palpable pain of emptiness and fear. We don’t want to look far ahead. We just want to rest in the present. We knew the way forward when the person we lost was still living with us, even if the way was tough. When that person is gone, we have a much harder time deciding where we are going.

      Fran was married for fifteen years. Several times during her marriage, her husband physically abused her. Despite the abuse, she stayed with him because she loved him and believed the stability of the marriage was best for her and her children. She learned how to make it through most of the days and years without suffering abuse. She walked on eggshells, but she walked nonetheless. She knew if she avoided certain topics and gave in when he became angry, she would be okay.

      However, one night the abuse became so brutal Fran decided she had had enough. She was terrorized by her husband, and she was terrorized by the thought of leaving her husband. But she finally found the courage to leave.

      The freedom Fran felt when she left was almost as frightening as the terror of her husband. How could she live? How would she support her children? How could she be a single parent? Darkness descended, and Fran did not know what to do. The energy she had mustered to leave her husband had now evaporated, leaving Fran depressed and exhausted. She felt as if someone had turned out the lights.

      Reorienting in the Dark

      When the “lights go out” and we are unable to see clearly where we are going, we slow down. We sometimes stop. We try to become reoriented. Because the eyes do not pick up signals that help us know where we are, we often use our other senses. We reach out a hand, feeling our way along. We listen, trying to determine if we hear something that sounds familiar. Our sense of smell stretches up on tiptoe, trying to detect something that can give us a sense of where we are.

      I remember hiking in the woods several years ago. Initially I was following trails others had made but eventually began to feel adventurous, wanting to explore unknown areas. I took off through the underbrush, sure I would come across another trail. As the sun started to set, I was hopelessly lost. I began to feel anxiety because I was losing my sight in the dimming light. There was nothing that gave me a clue as to where I was. Then I saw some deer droppings and realized that deer had been on the narrow path I was following. I also listened and heard automobile traffic in the distance. I knew the road went north and determined that I was facing west. My senses helped orient me, and I soon found my way back to the trail and returned to my car.

      When it is dark, we slow down and use other senses to find our way. At this time in the journey through change and loss, we begin to understand the struggle of faith reflected in the worship of the unseen God. The apostle Paul told the people of Corinth not to lose heart because people of faith look “not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). When we slow down because what we have seen has disappeared, we gain insight into the power of the unseen to open up the future.

      Slowing Down

      When we lose someone or some activity, we slow down to a speed that feels safe. Each step is a cautious effort. Someone once told me that he had experienced the loss of his mother as a descending darkness. СКАЧАТЬ