The One Where Light Pierces Darkness

“Sometimes people in our lives start drowning. Under lies, under emotions, under their struggles. And sometimes it affects us. But as believers we are called, when someone starts going under, to reach down through the water and give them a solid hand to grab on to. To help pull them to the surface, even if we don’t understand. Even if we warned ahead of time that the water was deep and the current was strong. Even if it means laying down our pride. Because we never know when that drowning person will be us, and our survival will depend on a hand of truth reaching form above the surface of the waters to pull us back into fresh air. Back to life.” –Journal, 6/30/11

I've been gone for a while.

And I don’t just mean that I haven’t written in a while. I think the real, true version of myself has been on some extended vacation over the past few months. Seminary has a way of dragging our hearts into the light and asking us to struggle with what we find there, and I am no exception. But it’s not just seminary…life issues out its own unique brand of trials to all of us, and there will be times that these trials drag our true selves away and leave a bruised and muted version of us behind to live our lives for a while.

And you know what? That’s okay.

As I have been wrestling with my own struggles, I've also been contemplating something about community and life in relationship that I think is pretty important. In this world, there must be periods of our lives where we are allowed to be honest about the pain we feel; when it is safe to not be okay. Freedom to be exactly where we are and not pressured to bring our vibrant and true selves out from hiding. In these moments, we need people around us who are okay with letting us not be happy, perky, or fun. We need freedom in relationship to not have to hold it all together, and understanding that the true version of ourselves cannot come out to play right now.  Sometimes, we need permission to acknowledge that we might be drowning.

I think too often we have no space where we are given this kind of safety. Either the community around us treats us as though we are so fragile that we may break at any moment, or they fight back against the discomfort of our pain by demanding that we hide reality so that they may feel comfortable again.

 I’m not saying that there isn't a time where we are called to set aside our struggles in order to care for others. I’m saying that as a community we put so much pressure on each other to maintain the homeostasis of our relationships, and in turn to hide the pain that sin has so freely planted in our lives. To acknowledge the depth of damage that sin has caused is terrifying, and most of us choose to run from it while rebuking those who would dare expose it.

But what if we were called to something else? What if, instead of sweeping sin and pain under the rug as the rest of the world does, we entered into it with others? What if we pushed past our discomfort and even frustration, and sat in darkness with the suffering? Might we then have a better position in which to bring in the light?

My true self has been showing its face a lot more often these days, and as I take joy in living more fully out of who God has made me to be, I’m looking back in gratitude and thankfulness for those the Lord specifically placed in my life during a particularly hard period. These few people not only sat in my struggles with me, but when the moment came they reached out their hands and sought to pull me back to fresh air and life. I am so grateful for their sacrificial love toward me.

And I am filled with sorrow about the number of others whose discomfort led them away from me in frustration and fear. Words of pain and condemnation coming from those that I trusted. As I seek to understand and love the people who could not enter grief with me, I pray that my experiences will deepen my own understanding of those grieving and help me to more willingly extend my presence and my hand toward those in the depths themselves.