THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Sixty-One

Entry Sixty-One: Job 42:5-6

Looking back I feel as if I have been climbing up a steep embankment from the deepest, darkest valley. It has been hard…at times, I despaired. Would I ever reach the summit? But every day, I have placed one foot before the other and now…now I sense I am about to crest this ridge. What will greet me on the other side? I don’t know. But I am stronger now…more resilient…and certainly no longer alone. My fellow climbers are here with me, and I am all anticipation for what the next season of my life holds in store for me.

Like sun shining through the leaves of the trees, patches of light reached down to me from time to time. There were moments of clarity…of lucidity. Those patches of light kept me from losing touch with reality. I could bear the darkness because of the dappled light along the way. But I learned that light shines through the lives of others…their kind deeds…their compassionate words…and I have learned to walk by that light even when there seems to be no light at all. 

But now, as I reach out my hand to grasp the final boulder, so that I can pull myself up and over, I sense a different light…a light like the dawn. As I stand in the cold early morning darkness and watch the sun rise in the East, I can see it clearly. It is cold now, but when the sun’s rays touch me, I will be warm. The darkness has tried to overwhelm me…to overcome…to overpower…to overthrow…but God’s light has been shining in that darkness. I was blinded by my own sorrow and could not see it. Now, He has opened my eyes and I see. My ears had heard about God…about His love, His compassion, His patience, His mercy, His grace…I had heard, and I had believed. But now…through this valley of darkness, I see Him…I finally truly see Him.

And I am awed…overjoyed…humbled…exalted. Tears flow freely, and each drop that falls, washes away my misperceptions of Who He is and who He wants me to be.

THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Sixty

Entry Sixty:

The winter winds are beginning to blow down the dusty streets…the days of rain will soon displace the days of sun. Not that we get much rain in Jericho. The valley keeps us fairly dry in contrast to Jerusalem, just a day’s walk to the West from us. But the winter rains bring a promise of new life. Without the coolness and the wetness, there would be no harvest. There is a movement…a flow from one season to another. 

I have been reading over the entries in the journal I have been writing since Benjamin left. Here too is movement…a flow…and here too is new life. My life is new, as are the lives of those in our growing family group. Like the rain replenishes the soil, so the mercy, grace, love, kindness, and compassion of God has washed over us and filled the emptiness inside us. The seeds of the Scriptures, sown through the years, have sprouted and grown. Perhaps in due season, we will bear much fruit to God’s glory. 

As I reflect on this, I see that this was the way God intended us to live from the beginning. We were never meant to be alone…it is not good, God said, for man to be alone. But it is not only in our union with a spouse that we find ourselves fulfilled. It is in union with our fellow human beings that the purpose of life is revealed. Together we display what it means to be human. Each one of us is a body made up of individual yet complimentary parts. If we are to function at all, each part must work together in harmony. So, too, it is when we learn to live in harmony with others that we learn to live…really live.

Had Benjamin not broken my heart, my heart would never have been opened to Levi and the others. It is through suffering that I have been made whole. It is through suffering that I have found life.

THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Fifty-Nine

Entry Fifty-Nine: Isaiah 53

My grief has had a very positive effect on my life. It has taught me that I am not alone. At first, I could not have imagined me saying such a thing. I felt alone…I was alone…after all, didn’t my circumstances prove that? Aaron was present…at times I wished he were not…he was so unpleasant, and his unpleasantness made me feel even more alone…but he was also absent. In one sense, he and Benjamin were the same…they were both at once present and yet absent. And then, my community…they too were present, but in a very hostile way…first disowning my son and then disowning me. In this, they were also absent. And God? My mind told me He was always with me…my faith demanded that I believe that. But where was He? Hiding in impenetrable light?

 No, I would never have been able to see anything positive in the beginning. All I could see was darkness. But now I have found that He was present in my aloneness. He did not only look on my pain…He took my pain upon Himself and bore it for me…otherwise I surely would have been crushed under the burden. Indeed, I believe I am beginning to understand God more than I ever have before. I now know how He feels when we, His people, turn away from Him…turn our backs on Him…reject Him for gods that are not gods. Isn’t that what Benjamin did to me? Isn’t that what Aaron has done as well? By embracing a theology of hatred, has He not strayed from the God Who defines Himself as love? 

But my aloneness has thrown me into the path of others who are also alone…alone in grief…alone in poverty…alone. And now my aloneness has given way to a togetherness…a deeper togetherness than I have every experienced before. A mutual interdependence. Our mutual pain has stripped away all pretence…and we are open one to the other…together, we can be completely vulnerable and feel perfectly safe.

THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Fifty-Eight

Entry Fifty-Eight: Psalm 12

We are getting to know more families torn apart by tragedy. There is something comforting about meeting other human beings who have faced the ugly, paralysing effects of grief, and yet have survived…and not only survived, but grown through the process. They are further on down the road to recovery than what I am…some even further along than Levi and his family… and this is has given us such hope. Watching them live life now, makes me think of a parent helping a baby walk for the first time. They are the parents…I am the child…their strength is the hand holding me up…leading me…guiding me…breaking my fall, as I am still prone to falling into darkness.

These new friendships remind me every day that I am not alone. That there are many who suffer all around me…who also feel that they are the only ones being systematically torn apart by something they cannot see or touch. To me, their battle scars are like nectar to the honeybee…I am sustained by their beauty of their resilience…their ability to pick themselves back up out of the cesspool of pain, and their determination to rediscover meaning and purpose in life even while carrying with them the unfillable void of loss. 

It is a strange truth…finding strength in weakness…comfort in pain. But if life is a school, teaching us what it means to really live, then everything must have a purpose…suffering included. Suffering is the heat that extracts a precious metal from the rock…that purifies it…and the more the heat, the better the metal. Or at least so I am told. The Psalmist tells us that the Word of God is better than silver refined and like gold purified seven times in a furnace. And he writes this in the context of our God arising to bring safety to the oppressed and the needy. Suffering teaches us that we are dependent…dependent on God and on our fellow human beings. I need my friends…my new family…and we all need our God.

THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Fifty-Seven

Entry Fifty-Seven:

Levi tells me that in order to help others, I have to learn how to help myself…but I wonder if it is not in the helping of others that I have found the strength and the reason to help myself. Since being engaged in activities so different to my previous routine when Benjamin was still here, I have been forced to distance myself from that which dragged me back into the past. 

I have been so busy working with my newfound friends that I have neglected to record my thoughts in my journal for some time now. I find that I am so much more aware of those around me who are not as fortunate as I am…especially the children. Jericho has its fair share of poverty stricken people…people who came with a hope that they might find gainful employment in a larger town, only to find that their expectations did not match reality. Many are so impoverished that they are now beggars who sit at the entrance to the town day after day, hoping for handouts from kind strangers. How is it possible that we, a nation supposedly under God, have so many destitute people right on our doorsteps? 

I found these poor men and women as I have been walking up and down the road by which Benjamin would follow should he return to me…to us. The law tells us to take care of the needy among us, and so we have begun to employ those who are still able, to work in the fields. Esther and her daughters are teaching some of the women folk to weave baskets out of the reeds that grow in abundance along the riverbanks. This activity really boosts my spirits.

But I still watch for Benjamin. My eyes strain to see the faces of those walking on the road. Dear God in Heaven grant that one day, I might see my son coming along the way…coming home to us. In the meantime, I occupy my waking moments with helping others help themselves. Aaron thinks I have finally gone mad…

THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Fifty-six

Entry Fifty-Six:

I am exhausted from carrying the weight of memory inside me…I have lived in the past too long…I have lived in a dream world too long. The seasons are changing. Summer is gracefully giving way to the cooler breezes of Autumn, and it is high time for me to move on as well…on to a different season. Weeks ago I thought that I would never again experience the bliss of pure joy…it was not only grief that swallowed me alive, but guilt…guilt that was mostly unfounded, but fed by the words and deeds of others, especially that of my older son, Aaron. 

But since I began to focus on others and their needs…my newfound friends, but especially Levi…a living, breathing, tangible, precious person who can benefit from my positive intervention and aid…I have begun to experience joy once more. We are visiting the pool by the river again…our whole new family…and we are laughing and having fun once more. The first time I felt happy again, the guilt was quick to follow. My son may be dead…he may be languishing in some foreign prison…he may have been robbed and is lying somewhere, injured…he may be hungry. And I was having fun? It felt wrong…callous…unloving. But Levi, in his wisdom…wisdom gained mostly by his own experience with grief and suffering…told me that as I was able to be kind to him as well as others, I needed to be kind to myself. I needed to intentionally and defiantly break out of the prison of sorrow and despair.

Since then, I have been working hard at rediscovering the sheer delight and enjoyment of life. No, I have not forced Benjamin out of my mind…out of my heart. To the contrary. Benjamin is at the very centre of my joy. I am learning to celebrate the fact that he is my son…love is not annulled by the bad choices made by others…he is and always will be my flesh and blood…a blessed consequence of the union of two people who truly loved each other. The son of my love…

THE UNTOLD STORY: Entry Fifty-Five

Entry Fifty-Five:

I have stopped dreaming dreams…dreams are wonderful things, but they are not reality. And dreaming too many dreams tend to leave me discouraged and disappointed. I can dream whatever I choose, but dreams are like mist in the sun…they fade without providing anything material to the dreamer. I have learned this indirectly from Elizabeth, Levi, Simeon, John…and the others…they are real, tangible. While dreams did provide some comfort in the days following Benjamin’s disappearance, they now provide nothing but the realization that they are dreams. Better to embrace what is real than to waste my time on what is not and what may never be. 

Now, I spend my time building relationships with my new friends…and rebuilding my relationship with my brother-in-law and his family…Daniel and his sweet, gentle wife, Esther…their daughters, Rachel and Rebekah. Together, we all help Levi and his family develop marketable skills, and we assist them in promoting their wares. We wonder at those who refuse to buy from them…do they not know that they cannot be defiled by helping those who cannot help themselves? Epecially since they are the main cause of their downward spiral into poverty.

So, I have exchanged my dreams for actual physical things. But this does not mean I have lost hope…to the contrary. I still watch the road every day, in anticipation for that moment when Benjamin finally sees the error of his ways and returns to a family ready to receive him with open arms and open hearts. Unlike dreams, hope is founded upon the reality that nothing is too hard for the Lord. He who opened Sarah’s barren and withered womb.  He who made the heavens and the earth.  He who gathered his people from wherever he scattered them and brought them back to their own homeland.  With him, all things are possible. Hope will never be disappointed as long as it is focused on the heart of God.