Winter solstice (where I found a glimmer of hope in the middle of the longest night).
This time last year, I wrote about how so many people were saying that the year 2018 had felt like several long and terrible years crammed into one. Tonight, as I stare down the last few days of 2019, I find myself marveling at this strange phenomenon yet again. Two weeks ago, I broke down on a friend’s sofa, crying hot tears that I thought would never stop coming as I told her about the countless red flags I’d been willfully ignoring—one of which is that it feels like it has been ages since the last time I sat down and put pen to paper here. You can ask WebMD or anyone that struggles with depression and anxiety and they will tell you that one of the most common symptoms is a loss of interest in the things that bring them joy. And while depression and anxiety have certainly been pulling tides, dictating the seasons of my life, I think what I’m feeling now is something different. After honesty’s tender and capable excavation, I think what I am feeling is grief.
In the words of CS Lewis, “no one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.”
In the past, I’ve been able to bury myself in my work and my relationships and try to focus on being the best little Erin I can be: sturdy, helpful, and always in control. For too long, I thought that that’s what God and the world needed from me, and so I committed myself without looking back and without pausing to consider that there could be a different way to live. Truthfully, in this moment, I cannot decipher where the grief ends and I begin. I am grieving, and I am learning to be okay with calling grief by her name.
Over the past year, I have cried and wrung my hands sore with friends who have feared the death of their marriage. I have fretted over my loved ones’ mental health and wondered if they’ve lost faith altogether. I have asked incredibly hard questions of my beloved little church that I thought might very well be my undoing there. I have watched skeptics muster up enough courage to pray for healing and then not receive it. I have honestly believed that God is holding out on me and that his pleasure and goodness will run out just short of the desires of my heart. My sobriety from self-harm has hung precariously in the balance. This year, people I’ve respected and followed for years have lost spouses, had their children maimed in totally freak accidents, and taken their own lives. I’ve been shocked again and again by the constant hum of the headlines: misogyny, racism, family separation, mass violence, and wars with no end in sight.
The writer of Ecclesiastes says “there is nothing new under the sun.” Certainly, nothing here has felt new or beautiful or alive. The other day, with my thoughts ricocheting between photos of world-renowned worship leaders lauding and fawning over Donald Trump, the vote for impeachment, and #WakeUpOlive, I confessed that it feels like a very strange moment to be a follower of the Way. The more I think about that, though, the more I realize that this moment is actually very familiar. We are well acquainted with desperation, darkness, and death. It is a revelation that threatens to send me careening into a chasm of cosmic hopelessness, and I for far too long, I consider letting it have its way.
It has been a very, very long night.
Then, this week, Peter’s profession of faith in John chapter 6 has been a song that I can’t seem to get out of my head. Where else would we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe you.
I don’t know where else to go.
He is still the object of my affection, and his upside-down Kingdom is still the thing I am willing to waste my one life on. All throughout the gospels, we see him elevating those who have been marginalized by the empire. And while the persistence of the empire in this political and cultural moment often conjures up feelings of hopelessness in my heart, Jesus says in Revelation 21, “behold, I am making all things new—this is trustworthy and true.”
This political and cultural moment? It is only a moment.
If he is trustworthy, and what he says is true—that he is in the business of making everything new, then it must mean that there is still room for mercy, even here, in the middle of the valley of the shadow of empire, of fractured relationships, dis-eased minds, and deferred dreams. Even in the middle of the longest, darkest night. Perhaps the greatest gift that this dark night has to offer is the opportunity to look up—to gaze long enough at the swirl of galaxy above us that the very hem of the Lord might come into focus and we might echo the breathless awe of Jacob, confessing that surely, the Lord is in this place. This may be our time for grief, but we do not grieve untethered. Hope is an anchor. And hope, by its very nature, understands that even though all is not well yet, there is still time for something new to be born.
This is not the end of the story.
This morning during peace passing, I shared that a few years ago, I learned that when the Quaker community commits to pray for someone, they say “I’ll hold you in the light,” and how I have held onto that sentiment like a liferaft.
Oh, how we need to be held in the light of a Jesus who is making all things new—the light of Emmanuel, God with us. Oh, how we need to be reminded that we are not citizens of this moment, and that, as one poet put it, our broken hearts do not bind us to brokenness. There will come a day when all will be made well.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow the sun will come up, revealing itself once again in gradient ribbons of golden and blue and purple hues over the horizon, and we will walk hand in hand together towards the springtime and the promise of this beautiful, new thing.
Photo by Craig Salmon