There should be a myth about a species of snake that lives off our tears and bites us when they begin to dry.
For the last couple years, after the death of my son, if asked how I was doing, I would say, “Terrible.” I said that to give myself permission to grieve, permission to feel my loss and brokenness. I recently finished All the Noise is in the Shallow End, a book by my pastor, Mark Warren. It is a bracing and honest account of his journey out of the shallow end of ambition, anxiety, and depression to the deep end of God’s grace and unconditional love. The book is a call to rest in just being with God and feeling God’s love in our bones and blood. In his excellent book, Mark challenges us to carefully examine ourselves.
I did not like the result of my examination. I discovered, to my dismay, that I am doing well. I feel loved by God and have deep peace in the midst of genuine heartbreak. I am not “terrible” even though I will never stop grieving the loss of Peter. I am full of what I call “stupid joy”—stupid because all the facts of my life argue against it. It is probably more like a “holy joy”, but this claim seems pretentious. There is a calm and peace I cannot explain and is not the result of being zapped by God. My heart even feels free and open to love others.
What disturbs me is that part of me doesn’t want to be okay—at rest in God. Peter’s death, and the terrible years leading up to it, were genuinely traumatic. And trauma has given me a license to be broken, messed-up, and a little self-centered. If we have wounds, people let us take time to lick them. Our pain can numb us to the pain of others. I didn’t want, I discovered, to lose the license to not care—to be self-absorbed.
Even worse, my poetic soul does not want to give up the tragic aura of being ruined by the loss of those I love. Part of me, I must confess, wants to be sick with melancholy. It is hard since I don’t drink—but people might excuse me becoming a sloppy drunk, crying in my beer. I can finally be a hero with a tragic back story. But I can’t hold the pose of tortured poet without feeling ridiculous—and dishonest.
I gave into temptation and revisited all the most traumatic moments. I cried a little, but realized I only had a healthy and reasonable grief—nothing grand, nothing poetic, nothing tragic. And these tears were a little forced—tears from the bite of the snake that feeds on them. I think all who go through trauma and grief must beware of this serpent and the license that trauma gives.
I am well because of all the little things. Each day Teckla I read scripture aloud, sing three hymns, sing some worship songs, and pray. God has not powerfully visited us during these times, but this practice has kept our hearts steadfast. As Mark Warner urges in his book, we have not been trying to get well or whole, we have been training—doing the spiritual exercises that allows God to heal us. We have not made it rain; we have only set out buckets and prayed. God’s grace and help has filled the buckets. Walks in the woods and prairies, hugs from grandchildren, and breakfast at Perkins with friends are a few of the common graces that sustain us.
I have traded the license of trauma for the freedom of the Spirit.
