I just feel like touching base tonight with readers who follow my tortuous journey. Thank you for sticking with me, coming here to read and sometimes interact. It would feel very lonely to share my heart and struggles if no one were reading. I especially want to thank those of you who comment: to hear that my words are meaningful and encouraging to you is a trickle of grace and hope into my heart. Because of my depression, my active relational circle is very small, so I have almost nowhere else to make a positive impact on the world, to feel my life matters to anyone but my wife and dog. I just want you all to know that you matter to me, and that is not a small thing. Thank You.
Beautiful, Solemn, Peaceful, but Lonely
Some of my flaws are more fundamental than others, more pervasive and enmeshed, more demanding and persistent, more hidden and stubborn, like my deep rooted legalism. If I voiced my intentions, I would say I’m a recovering legalist, but my progress seems so glacial that that might be unfairly congratulatory, like a daily drinker claiming to be a recovering alcoholic. As I think about it more, I really have improved a great deal over the years, but all that thrust has not lifted me above its gravitational drag. Legalism remains my default in so many situations, a judgmental sinkhole out of which I must crawl, talking down my critical reaction to others. Trying to be gracious is a very long way from actually being gracious.
My soul is resistant to giving grace because it makes me feel so vulnerable. In a disagreement, if I can dismiss them as being stupid or unbiblical or biased, then I don’t have to give any weight to their idea, which threatens my own perspective, a perspective around which I have built a safe world for myself. If I label them untrustworthy, I can justify my suspicions of them and guard my heart against their potential betrayal. If I mark them as selfish, I can depend wholly on myself… for fear they will refuse my request for help and so prove I am not worth helping. It threatens me at my core. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.” A closed heart is a safe heart. Thinking generously of others, trusting them, and opening my heart to them is dangerous. Giving grace opens me up to assault from every quarter.
Living in a world full of potential aggressors is frightening and lonely, so I am drawn to nice people, safe people, people like my wife. They have helped me slowly build trust, creep towards vulnerability, discover genuine connection. Once I develop a close relationship, I find that grace flows naturally… until I feel threatened. That is when my grace muscle is stretched as I claim grace firmly enough to support myself and then extend it to the one challenging me. Berly has been the perfect companion for this journey into fear and grace.
On Valentine’s Day while Kimberly was at the doctor’s, I stomped my heart out on our front lawn to surprise her.
It was spontaneous, with little forethought, because I love my wife and want to express it, but when I am bowed down with depression, my energy is used up on today’s survival, not tomorrow’s plans. This is how depression often plays out in a committed relationship–with what little energy we have, we give, and we appreciate the gift, however small. It may look meager and haphazard, and to be honest, sometimes it feels that way, but in a cold world with thin blankets what we need most is a close friend.
The substructure of our relationship is good, very good, but the frills are often missing. Far from being a problem, this is a sign of our marriage’s strength. Many couples count on the frills to smooth over their stresses. To mollify an angry outburst, he brings home a bouquet or she whips up a banquet instead of sorting through their feelings with empathy and honesty. They’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. They begin with “Let me be honest,” and it goes downhill from there. So they opt for the smooth-over. But when frills become the primary language of love, flubbing it can threaten the relationship.
Depression strips Kimberly and me of many of these emotional bonuses, so we cannot use them as a substitute for the honest, hard work of sorting out our differing views, feelings, and thoughts. Of necessity we learn to make room for one another’s weaknesses and limitations, trust one another’s hearts, accept one another’s efforts. Without frills to fall back on, our relationship becomes deeply grounded, and our small offerings of love become far more meaningful.
The first thing Kimberly saw each morning as she left for work last week was the heart I stamped out in the snow. And for her it was not just a romantic gesture, but a symbol for what beats behind the image, a heart she knows intimately and feels safe in because she courageously shares her true self and is embraced for who she is. Hallmark and Whitman’s can never compete with that.
I was a 45-year-old bachelor when I started dating Kimberly, and my friends, assuming I was girl-dumb, insisted I romance her with flowers, fancy chocolates, and fru-fru gifts… take her to see a chick-flick… say “I love you.” I smiled and nodded to placate their eagerness, but I knew they were wrong. For starters, Berly prefers cheap chocolate and is ambivalent about gifts. They might have known “women,” but I knew Berly. The problem with our romance pop-culture, and much of the marriage enrichment industry, even many Christian seminars and books, are the notions that all women are alike, that men cannot understand them, and therefore that husbands should simply learn some basic rules for marriage maintenance. Men regularly come home from a weekend retreat with a checklist to follow: kiss your wife goodbye when you leave for work, tell her you love her, have a weekly date night, and for goodness sake drop the toilet seat after peeing. And those are the better men, the ones who are really trying.
It’s a deep sadness that our most intimate relationships are held together with stock routines because we’re convinced we can’t understand each other. The gender gap might as well be an intergalactic separation, after all, women are from Venus and men are from Mars… and we’re apparently lost in space. It’s certainly a nice gesture to take a quiz on our five love languages and task oneself (say) with giving three daily encouragements to a spouse, but how much does that help in understanding one another deeply and thoroughly, which is what the relationship truly needs. It is almost as though we’ve given up on real relationship (vulnerable sharing, open listening, trusting, understanding, accepting, valuing, empathizing) and reduced love to what we do for one another.
Mutual understanding between the sexes is not easy or quick. It takes a lot of time and energy, not to mention fear and pain, and perhaps for that reason our culture has largely abandoned the effort as hopeless. “It has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried” (as Chesterton said of true Christianity). But nice words and kind behavior can never substitute for the gritty, real work of heart connection. The first is comfortable and functional, like a pair of old shoes, the last is revolutionary.
I’m sitting here listening to instrumental hymns on Pandora. It transports me back to a childhood full of the good feelings of an uncomplicated world, truth distilled into a plain, straightforward way of life agreed on by everyone, at least everyone who was right. All of us knew what was good and bad–and who was good and bad. There was no confusion or doubt, no questions or tangles to sort out, but as simple as The Waltons or The Sugar Creek Gang, a Christian book series about boys who always did the right thing (or paid dearly for failing).
Spiritual progress was like apprenticing to a trade. The models were showcased, especially parents, so we all knew what the finished product should look like, and the tools were laid out (Bible reading, prayer, church) so we knew how to get there. It was simply a matter of perfecting the skills, getting better and better at using these methods and plans to reach that end. The answers were all given, we just had to memorize them and put them to practice like a multiplication table.
As children we were shielded from any real danger, but as we grew older we were trained in beating back the onslaught of the world. We were supplied with all the reasons why those who disagreed with us were wrong, and we were constantly warned not to listen to liberal and secular views, except as a means to spot the weaknesses to refute. We were on the side of God. What else mattered? As long as we stayed in the circle of safety it felt secure, we belonged, and nothing ahead could bring us down.
That contentment of security and simplicity warms my heart to recall and re-feel. Except it’s like the nostalgia I feel from watching The Waltons–I never lived in a wood-frame house outside a small town with dirt roads and plain, country neighbors, so that sense of loss is for a past I never had. I do have genuine and positive childhood memories, but they have been sanitized, split off from the fear and guilt and shame I lived with for failing to meet family standards. The questions and confusion and inner turmoil I faced as an adult did not come from the incursions of a secular perspective, but from the inherent dissonance in my heart of the worldview in which I was raised.
There was much good in my childhood home and much good in my parents, but their prefab worldview did not work for me. I tried hard to make it fit, like the lad David trying on Saul’s armor, but it hurt and hobbled instead of helping me. In some sense I think this is everyone’s story because we all differ in some profound ways from our parents, and so we must find the path that works best for ourselves. For some of us, blazing a new trail is so scary and hard that we start our own journey much too late in life. I struggled through my adolescent independence at forty.
Perhaps our longing for a past we lost but never really had is homesickness for a past we really did have, but older than memory, a past where we walked hand-in-hand with God in an unspoiled world. Perhaps that yearning was planted in us as a whispered promise to pull us on till we see the face of God once again. So let me remember the good ol’ days with fondness and stoke the hope that helps me lift each tired leg on this long journey home.
Matthew 1:6 and Jesse fathered David the King–
As a schoolboy, I refused to sleep late Saturday mornings because the Roy Rogers Show came on at 7:30. Dressed in white from his stetson to his boots, my hero galloped in on his white horse Trigger. He stood for all that was good. But every villain rode in on a charcoal horse with an outfit as black as his heart. I was raised on stereotypes, and perhaps little kids need that kind of over-simplification, though I’m not so sure. All kinds of bad come from boxing people into categories, even favorable categories. The girl whose identity is built on her reputed good-looks is just as bound and broken as the one whose essence is shaped around her reputed bad-looks. The jock is as vulnerable as the geek to being squeezed into expectations and assumptions that suffocate his true self.
Weighing down others with our expectations or stooping under theirs deflects the flow of grace in our lives because we can never fully predict where God is taking us and who he is shaping us to be. Wise counsel is always a support for self-discovery, not a substitute for it.
But Jesse has clear notions of his sons’ abilities and roles, so he sends his youngest, David, into the fields to shepherd and marches his big brothers off to soldier. After all, an older, larger, stronger man is clearly more fit to fight. Just ask Goliath. When the prophet Samuel came to look among his sons for the next leader of Israel, Jesse did not even deign to bring his youngest in from tending the sheep. He clearly did not qualify. Samuel himself, the very mouthpiece of God, looked at the oldest, tallest son and thought he’d found God’s choice. They expected the storyline: “Jesse fathered Eliab the King,” and that would have been as messed up for Eliab as for David… not to mention Israel. His own father, who knew him from a babe, and God’s anointed spokesman both missed who David really was.
Expectations and norms can blind us to the best gifts of grace. God’s valuations are so often different from ours. When our assumptions determine our direction, we are quite likely to miss the way. Even wise, godly folks have blind-spots and spiritual myopia, but if we stay open to the surprising and unexpected appearances of grace, God has freedom to bring out our internal wonder and unique capacity. Grace is always on the loose, hawk-eyed for every chance to draw out our inimitable beauty.
This morning I was cruising down Lakeside Drive when a pokey car from a side street turned in front of me. That’s one of my pet peeves. If a driver feels some aggressive need to pull in front of me, fine, just go fast enough to stay out of my way. I stepped on my brakes and would have forgotten it, except the guy slowed down even more, creeping into a gas station. “REALLY!?” I ranted to my dashboard, “You had to cut me off ’cause you were in a hurry to… STOP?”
I can self-justify with the best, but I’m not so far gone as to equate my petty irritations with righteous indignation. I knew I wasn’t channeling Jesus with my defensive driving.
This also suggests a serious limitation to that great advice to “be in the moment.” Oh, I was in the moment, all right, totally in the moment, that scowling, growling, hand-clenching moment. Sometimes you need to get out of the moment, be a little less present, to grasp the bigger picture.
So I tried to talk myself down. I noticed that he was a geezer, and they do everything slower, everything. But I’ve played that chess game with myself before, so I know all the moves. I responded with, “Hey, driving faster takes no extra strength. Retirement ain’t gonna slow me down. That’s no excuse.” “Ah,” said my mental opponent, “And how many wrecks will your age-diminished reactions cause before you slacken your speed?” Okay, that was a surprise, a new argument that sounded suspiciously like my wife. How did she get in my head? That’s totally unfair–two against one.
But her voice is the one I really want to hear, not because it is right, making me wrong and bad, but because it is gracious. She wants to find peace through mutual acceptance of our weaknesses. In contrast, I find that when everyone follows the rules, we all get along. Legalistic happiness. It’s pretty common in church.
The problem is when we screw up… and we all screw up. The law has no margin for error, so it makes us all losers, and we scramble to escape that weight of condemnation. Each time others break our rules, rules that ensure our safety, we feel slighted, devalued, and disrespected, and even small slights cut deeply because we already agree with them, we believe we deserve no respect. When someone cuts me off in traffic, I feel less of a person, so I get defensive. In my relationships I push others to change, to conform, to live in a way that does not tear open my self doubt. Everyone, follow the rules!
The voice of grace sounds so small and useless against such visceral drives, and it calls me to abandon the very thing that is protecting my fragile sense of well-being: my ragged record of good, which is my only justification for squeezing others into line. Grace whispers that we are loved regardless of our record, that we are valued fully even in our failures. But I find it hard to trust. Grace is like oxygen–once you let it in, it is available to everyone in the room. If you allow grace to cover you as a loser, then it necessarily covers all losers, and then you have to drop your legalistic demands. But their flawed conformity to rules is the only thing keeping me protected. For all its defects and failures, the legal system looks pretty safe, and grace looks pretty risky. No wonder faith is the only way into grace.
I came to work early today so the daytime librarians could scoot home ahead of the snow that is now piling up on my car. Having lived in Asheville, NC for 4 years and Chicago for 6, I know how to get around well enough in the snow–it’s ice that’s the real menace. That and southern drivers. But by the time I leave late tonight there won’t be much else on the road. This town closes down by 10 p.m., even on weekends. If you want a midnight snack, you have to settle for Sheetz gas station.
All the students seem to be taking the night off, building snowmen or huddled in their rooms I guess, since nobody’s here. The snow outside is beautiful, clumping onto bushes and drifting against the porch’s classic pillars, turning everything white and pure. I love snow, the single pleasure of winter weather, and we’re expecting more than a foot. Our dog Mazie will have great fun bouncing through it tomorrow.
My latest bout of bruising depression that stomped in two weeks ago seems to be slipping away. I don’t know why it came, I don’t know why it is pulling out. For two or three days I have had a precarious emotional detente. I can see the shadowy figures outside casing the place, but they haven’t broken in again. Their brooding distance doesn’t make for peace… or even recovery, but it gives relief. I think if I keep steady, the marauders will draw back. Those with experience know that depression includes more than awful feelings. Even when the black lifts, the gray fog continues to deaden and debilitate, but I’d rather be under a cloud than under assault.
Some days I just ache. I can feel my mouth pulled into the lines of a half-grimace, like someone trying to cover up an irrepressible agony. The very question of hope versus hopelessness grows distant as the present pain blocks out any future. There is just this moment… which stretches on hour after hour. I can distract myself, but it seems so futile–like playing peek-a-boo with a feverish baby. At least if I had some huge loss, say of a loved-one, I would have clarity about the reason for my pain, a direction to focus my feelings, and hope that over time some healing would come. It would make sense. And others would understand. What is there even to share or cry over if the misery is nameless?
Janathan Grace Reflections 