The squeaky snow and a boat

I originally penned this in January of 2014 when depression had come to hang around for awhile.

The squeaky snow, now drifted across the sidewalk, made my trek to the post office a bit more labor intensive than usual. Underneath the new snow, the ice-crusted layer broke with each step, further slowing my progress. It was another cold and gray January in Michigan.

The words to that classic Christmas carol – Good King Wenceslas – kept going through my head. Maybe it’s because I had just endured the worst Christmas in my memory.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
Where the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel.

It wasn’t night, but it was pretty darn cold. I felt like that poor man, looking for anything to bring me a small measure of comfort. I refuse to drive my car a half mile to the post office, so come hell or high water, I was walking.

I had a couple of letters to mail. One to the Governor to plead my son’s case. And another to my son, attempting to deliver love and encouragement.

I’ve felt like a failure at both lately. Discouragement loves to reach out with its dark foggy fingers when you least expect it. Sucking your breath away, and replacing it with a stone – making it hard to breathe. Feeling yourself to be absolutely without resources and hope make each morning unwelcome.

I remember when I lived in Arizona – how I loved to be awakened by the sun! I placed my bed just so, and my blinds at the proper level for privacy, but still allowing the sunshine to kiss my face in the morning. I would get up early just to see the sun rise triumphantly over the mountains. I anticipated almost to bursting each morning as it came. How I loved it there.

Life takes us and abuses us and then throws us into the gutter sometimes.

Gutters are unpleasant places. Cold and wet and filthy with mud and dirt and the detritus of others. When it’s hard to breathe, though, we may just lay there for a while, trying to get our strength back. Or so we tell ourselves. We can become comfortable in our uncomfortableness.

When our hearts have become filled to the brim with hurt and disappointment and despair, we have no room left for light and love and laughter.

We sit in our own filth of depression and weep. We know we need to pick ourselves up and put a smile on our face. We know we need to let go of what we cannot fix. We know these things.

But grief is a hard taskmaster. Its chains are like hardened steel and all we feel is the pain they inflict whenever we move. So we try not to move. But they continue to squeeze our filled up hearts, as if an unseen tormentor was at work, and as the hurt and disappointment and despair spill over, a never-ending well of more keeps seeping in and we don’t know how to stop that well up.

So we stay where we are, restless in our pain, wondering how all the people passing us by don’t see us. How they can continue on their way as if we aren’t there. Our despair makes us mute. And our grief robs us of desire.

I have this mental picture in my head. It’s a picture of a small vessel being tossed around on a rough sea. The howling wind and the driving rain are relentless. My tiny boat is slowly filling with water and beginning to break apart. Terror is as palpable as the sting of the raindrops on my face. And Jesus is sleeping on a pillow.

And I go to him and shake him over and over begging him to wake up and help me. But he continues to sleep.

And then I hear some faint words being thrown about on the wind, and they come from Job long ago – “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

And so here I sit in my proverbial ash heap, proverbially scraping my open sores with pieces of broken pottery as my tears mix with the rain, waiting for Jesus to hear me crying out to him to wake up.

*****

When our days and nights are dark and terrifying, and when it feels like nothing will ever change for the better, hang on because it will. Despair eventually runs its course and the sharp edges of grief soften.

Take courage, for the storm will abate, the sun will shine, and Jesus, through everything, will protect you from the worst of it while you wait. Your strength will grow and hope will once again spring forth and life will be good.

Trust me. I know. Life will always be difficult, because this is our training ground. Jesus hears us even when our hearts betray us by believing he is oblivious to our struggles. You have protection you can’t see and help outside the storm swirling around you working on your behalf.

It’s going to be alright. Hold fast to what you have.