LITMIR.BIZ

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the midst of this time in my life I began to reflect on my own journey—to discover if there was anything in this pain and loss that could help me understand and live life better. My heart had been ripped open, and the wounds of loss were raw. Sadness consumed me. The sharing of the Lord’s Supper, where brokenness and suffering are central, became a much richer and more powerful worship experience. Shed blood and broken body became visceral, and I felt shared pain with the One remembered and with the people in the pew beside me.

      I yearned for comforting, for warm light to anoint the wounds and to heal me, for the suffering to ease and for hope to visit my heart again. I wanted to believe there was light coming in through the tears of my heart, but I didn’t know how to get through the pain to discover that light.

      As I looked at what I was doing with my life, I grasped the truth of the poet Jack Gilbert, who said, “We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.”³ I realized that the life I had created was no longer the life I could live. I had learned a particular way of naming reality. The people and actions of my life were constructed in a particular way, creating constellations by which I named them. The constellations were named husband, pastor, father, and son. But as life’s structures disappeared, I was unable to name myself and was left looking at a black sky with millions of stars. I could no longer see the constellations—just the stars.

      Dim Lights

      I found myself slowing down because I didn’t know who I was anymore. When I experienced the loss of my wife, my dad, my job, and the community I had called home, someone turned off the lights in my life. When you can’t see very well, you don’t move as fast.

      The lights don’t go off all of a sudden. Sometimes when one experiences a painful loss, there is a sudden burst of bright light. Sometimes when one inquires how a person is doing soon after the death of her husband, the answer may be, “She is doing amazingly well. She’s taking care of business.” Painful loss often produces a spurt of energy and clarity that one seldom experiences in the normal routine of life. Adrenaline rushes through our system, which insulates us from the pain and energizes us to endure the stress produced by the loss.

      For most of us though that light begins to dim when our energy runs out. The energy required to deal with the immediate need to simply hold on and create some temporary stability is soon depleted. The clarity provided by the immediate tasks soon fades as the fog of unknowing descends upon us. We often find ourselves sleeping much more than we did before. The dark of sleep is much more welcoming than the light of reality that faces us.

      This slowing down is very much related to the inability to see where we are going. It is very much like the descending sunset and the emerging dark of night. We find ourselves drawn to the immediacy of the present by the palpable pain of emptiness and fear. We don’t want to look far ahead. We just want to rest in the present. We knew the way forward when the person we lost was still living with us, even if the way was tough. When that person is gone, we have a much harder time deciding where we are going.

      Fran was married for fifteen years. Several times during her marriage, her husband physically abused her. Despite the abuse, she stayed with him because she loved him and believed the stability of the marriage was best for her and her children. She learned how to make it through most of the days and years without suffering abuse. She walked on eggshells, but she walked nonetheless. She knew if she avoided certain topics and gave in when he became angry, she would be okay.

      However, one night the abuse became so brutal Fran decided she had had enough. She was terrorized by her husband, and she was terrorized by the thought of leaving her husband. But she finally found the courage to leave.

      The freedom Fran felt when she left was almost as frightening as the terror of her husband. How could she live? How would she support her children? How could she be a single parent? Darkness descended, and Fran did not know what to do. The energy she had mustered to leave her husband had now evaporated, leaving Fran depressed and exhausted. She felt as if someone had turned out the lights.

      Reorienting in the Dark

      When the “lights go out” and we are unable to see clearly where we are going, we slow down. We sometimes stop. We try to become reoriented. Because the eyes do not pick up signals that help us know where we are, we often use our other senses. We reach out a hand, feeling our way along. We listen, trying to determine if we hear something that sounds familiar. Our sense of smell stretches up on tiptoe, trying to detect something that can give us a sense of where we are.

      I remember hiking in the woods several years ago. Initially I was following trails others had made but eventually began to feel adventurous, wanting to explore unknown areas. I took off through the underbrush, sure I would come across another trail. As the sun started to set, I was hopelessly lost. I began to feel anxiety because I was losing my sight in the dimming light. There was nothing that gave me a clue as to where I was. Then I saw some deer droppings and realized that deer had been on the narrow path I was following. I also listened and heard automobile traffic in the distance. I knew the road went north and determined that I was facing west. My senses helped orient me, and I soon found my way back to the trail and returned to my car.

      When it is dark, we slow down and use other senses to find our way. At this time in the journey through change and loss, we begin to understand the struggle of faith reflected in the worship of the unseen God. The apostle Paul told the people of Corinth not to lose heart because people of faith look “not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). When we slow down because what we have seen has disappeared, we gain insight into the power of the unseen to open up the future.

      Slowing Down

      When we lose someone or some activity, we slow down to a speed that feels safe. Each step is a cautious effort. Someone once told me that he had experienced the loss of his mother as a descending darkness. He said he had to live as if he were driving at night. He could only go as fast as his headlights would allow him to see.

      When we have lost someone or something that has helped define who we are, remembering that we are in the dark and our eyes have to adjust can be helpful. It helps to remember that our friends may be offering a flashlight of encouragement to help us see a little farther ahead, but these are their flashlights and not ours. We see the future in the dark as only a vague outline. When driving in the darkness without lights, we have difficulty determining what is ahead of us. The uncertainty of what we see means we move cautiously, in spite of our own desire or the desire of others that we move more quickly.

      Moving forward in the dark is deceptive and often confusing. Sometimes we think we see clearly, and other times we are certain we don’t see anything at all. When my wife Deborah and I first started dating, we were both in free fall. Deborah was adjusting to being single after a divorce that ended a twenty-five-year marriage. I was adjusting to single life after losing my wife to death, my career to a job change, and my home of twenty years. When Deborah and I first began to date, we saw clearly and the passion was palpable. We saw clearly by the burning passion. Then one of us would become scared, and the night of uncertainty would envelop us and we would back away from the relationship. This occurred a couple of times over a three-year period. Eventually the darkness of fear and uncertainty gave way to more consistent light, and we decided to move ahead together. We began to make plans for further down the road rather than simply on the impulse of the moment. We began to wake up not only to our present feelings and fears but also to the dreams and hopes that light the path into the future.

      Back Roads

      I became aware that my journey of living through loss was more frequently traveled on the back roads of life. As I sorted through the emotional rubble of my life, I could not deal with the intensity of interstates and major highways. As I traveled to work from my home or to my mother’s home five hundred miles away, I would choose the roads less traveled. Something drew me to the slower, less confusing route.

      I then read a book that helped me understand what I was doing. Milan Kundera, in his book Immortality, talks of the differences between highways and roads. He suggests that highways are intended to get us from point A to point B as quickly as possible. The

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