Ed: This article is part of an ongoing series by Robert called Devotions Upon Divergent Occasions. Read his introduction here.
In his children’s classic, Stuart Little, E.B. White describes the life of a misfit trying to find his place in the world. The protagonist, a mouse born into a nice, middle-class family in which he struggles to belong, goes through a series of adventures and misadventures in his quest for significance, love and meaning. The book closes:
“Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north. The sun was just coming up over the hills on his right. As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.”
This passage always echoed within me. Looking back over my life, Stuart’s journey seems an apt metaphor for mine, especially now: over 60 and well into the last half of my life, I finally feel like I am heading in the right direction. It so happens that I’m writing this while looking out at a bright, if chilly, Easter day, when renewal and new beginnings are in the air. The enduring appeal of this theme—reflected in nature and in our lives—reminds us that the starting point of resurrection hope begins in the grave, in darkness, defeat and confusion.
In meditating on this I realized that the only way to begin recounting my journey was to revisit the darkest valley in my life, when all that I thought I had built—everything of enduring value—fell apart. A number of low points preceded it. I’ll begin with them, if only to illustrate that I had to go through a lot of pain before I was willing to reevaluate the course of my life.
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased”
It was no secret in our family and among our friends that my wife and I had struggled in our marriage. Seeking help from licensed therapists was deemed dangerous, unbiblical, and frowned upon in our church community. We sought help from our pastors, but their lack of training left them ill-equipped to understand our relational issues (or anyone else’s for that matter). So, while we dutifully went to counseling sessions with them, read books, and attended marriage retreats, we were left without constructive help and a way forward. Our pain and despair deepened. For practicing Christians, this left us in a bit of a quandary: what to do when the place that had given meaning and purpose to our lives could not help us navigate the one relationship that was most important to us?
Mostly, we did nothing. We lived an uneasy truce between reality and our expectations, which never quite died. We never entertained the idea of divorce; that was beyond the pale. We clung to the idea and form of a relationship and moved forward with a life marked by an unfulfilling marriage, surrounded by friends and family who loved us, and with whom we were honest about our struggles.
Not surprisingly, this uneasy truce could not last. We were sad and frustrated enough to finally make the difficult (at least for us) decision to seek professional help. In therapy we dug deeper than we ever had, uncovering pain and hurt and offenses that forced us to reckon with who we really were, and if we were willing to make the changes necessary to build a new relationship. This essay is not about our marriage. Still, the reckoning in our marriage began a process of ongoing growth and healing that continues to this day. Facing the reality that I had issues to deal with if I hoped for a life of love and joy, I began the process of unraveling the image and persona I had created and presented to the world.
During this time a series of family crises further destabilized the once-firm ground that I had stood upon. My elder sister, and the only truly maternal figure in my life, came down with cancer, leading to a rapid decline and death. In many ways, she had held the siblings and our families together through the force of her personality. After her death, we continued to have family functions like Thanksgiving meals at our home, but these were never again the same. The semblance of a happy, extended family had been irretrievably lost.
The next blow came when my eldest brother was unmasked as a pedophile, arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. Every family has its issues, to be sure, but this shame is uniquely awful. I had taken enough ground in therapy to embrace the shame while realizing I did not need to carry it with me. And yet, my tendency was to try to understand what might have happened to my brother and the choices he made to live in the hell he created. With wise counsel and following a stronger inner compass of self-understanding, I laid this pursuit aside to focus on my immediate relationships, especially on my marriage which was in crisis. But I had no doubt, and still have no doubt, that the questions raised by this tragedy will one day have to be faced.
Then, one of my nephews died, suddenly and tragically. The meltdown of anything that looked like a happy family seemed complete. Within the space of a few years, I had lost two close family members, my brother was in all important respects lost as well, and I was attempting, with marginal success which felt more like failure, to put my marriage back together. Humpty Dumpty was my soulmate.
And I had not yet reached the bottom.
“Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow”
[Note: The following I write with the encouragement of my daughter, Bella, with whom I enjoy as close and happy a relationship as I ever dreamed I could have. But that closeness was a dark valley away.]
It was a day like any other when our son-in-law showed up at our door with the announcement that our daughter was leaving him. In a culture where this pain is a normal part of many lives, it’s hard to convey just how shocking and crushing this news was to us. And, in fact, my mind refused to accept it. We immediately hopped in the car, fear rising in our hearts. I remained convinced that this was an overreaction to something, or perhaps a call for help. But whatever it was, I was sure it was fixable. Surely our daughter—our daughter—was not going to rip apart her family and inflict the pain of a broken family on her sons, our only grandchildren.
One look at her face, when we entered their apartment, told me that the unthinkable was indeed happening. In the charged conversation that ensued, we cried and implored her to give her marriage another chance. It was as emotionally manipulative as I think I have ever been. At the heart of this manipulation was a Fear. I feared for her soul, I feared for what our grandsons would become in the wake of a broken home, I feared for their eternal destiny.
The fear of Hell operates in the psyche of every true evangelical. If you believe that every person’s destiny is either a heaven of peace and joy or eternal torment under the perpetual wrath of God, then the only sane and logical and loving way to live is to do all you can to keep those you love on the path to heaven. We succeeded in impressing upon our daughters the importance of committing their lives to Jesus. My understanding was that the parables Jesus told of fire and wrath were explicit warnings about an eternal hell. I’ll more thoroughly explore the subject of hell in the future; for now, I just want to communicate what a choking fear it is to think that your children, whom you love more than you ever imagined it was possible to love, might be separated from you forever.
It probably seems a stretch, if you are unfamiliar with the culture I’m describing, to see how I could go from “my daughter is divorcing her husband” to “her sons are now more likely to reject our faith” to “those I love are likely going to hell.” I’m still trying to understand this myself. But believe me that this fear is palpable, seems rational, and excuses virtually anything in the service of preventing what seems the inevitable destiny of someone breaking from the cultural mores we cherished. If you have never been under the sway of this fear, then I hope what I write helps you develop a degree of sympathy for those of us whose lives were ruled by it.
My journey from the tear-filled appeals to our daughter to a depth of despair I never thought possible was my version of what Christian mystics call the dark night of the soul. Many times over the next few months I would pull over to the side of the road, unable to drive because of weeping, filled with sadness as I thought of the pain and heartache my daughter was bringing upon herself, her sons, her husband, all of us.
The nadir came during one night of weeping on our porch, pouring out my agony to my wife. It had become clear in the intervening months that Isabella was firm in her intention of leaving her husband. In a final moment of helpless anger, I screamed curses towards my daughter, into the darkness.
In the quiet aftermath of my abusive eruption, my mind cleared. Somewhere, somehow, I had lost my way. The loving Father that Jesus had proclaimed God to be, that I loved and had dedicated my life to serve - that Father seemed far, far away.
A dozen scenes of my life with Isabella flashed before me: the beautiful baby I had held, the even more beautiful woman she had become, the little girl I had taken on countless dates, had read The Lord of the Rings to, her bright smile lighting up my life as we talked about what we loved, the dreams we shared. In my deepest despair I remembered how much I loved her. The profound repentance and turning from the path of destruction that I had prayed would come to Isabella finally came; it came to me. The sad and broken man looking at the rubble of the life he thought he had built - this man had to die. This man, thank God, was dying.
In all the thoughts and prayers preceding that night, through all the appeals to God to fix this by turning our daughter away from the path she had chosen, never had I stopped and asked: “My daughter says she loves God, she knows that the step she’s taking is drastic, life-changing, and devastating. Why is she doing this?” This bright, kind, and intelligent woman was stepping into a terrifying unknown. I was not meeting her in her confusion and pain. I had shepherded her, as best I knew how, through all the major transitions of her life. How had I come to curse her? How was I leaving her alone, feeling the weight of my disappointment, my bitterness?
That night on our porch was the most significant turning point in my life. During these days God was revealed to me as so much more than the male authority figure of my imagination. The God who met me in my pain was not the righteous judge who was disappointed in my failure. They (I can think of no better pronoun) were generous Father, nurturing Mother and guiding Spirit. This God I hardly knew was leading me back to the person I was always meant to be, to a better self I could only dimly imagine in the dark grave of that darkest of nights.
“That perilous stuff / Which weighs upon the heart”
At the end of Stuart Little, before he climbs into his car and drives into a new day, Stuart has a conversation with a telephone line repairman who is resting by the side of the road. Upon hearing that he is headed north the repairman comments:
“There’s something about north, something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion.”
“That’s the way I look at it,” said Stuart. “I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days.”
I have been orienting myself all my life to a true north, seeking a centering compass direction for my soul. This journey has been filled with many course corrections, detours and surprising twists. I’ll explore more of these in further Meditations.
To my fellow northbound travelers, grace and peace.
