Stop Embracing the Darkness

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Gentle Reader,

It wasn’t my plan to spend this day curled up in bed begging God to make the stomach pains stop. And spending intimate time with the porcelain throne. Third time in four months this has happened. Probably more doctor’s visits and tests in my not-so-distant future.

Which has me thinking.

Life is really hard. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Illness. Financial stress or outright collapse. Homes burn down in freak electrical fires. Friends move away. Jobs change. Divorce happens. Loved ones die.

It sucks.

Sucks more to stay in that place, the place you go to when the initial shock hits.

I’m just going to be blunt: We have to stop wallowing.

We have to stop embracing the darkness.

Not for nothing did I decide to kill myself three-and-a-half years ago. I get what it is to be so far down the rabbit hole of grief that you can’t even begin to imagine light or warmth. I don’t at all think that we should avoid mourning or working through our issues and feelings. I don’t believe that sorrow is tidy or linear.

I do believe that it passes. No, we don’t always “get over” something. Life will never be the same after a death in the family, the sting of betrayal or a loss of security. These kinds of things are forever-type changes that ripple through the years.

But if we’re still indulging in anger over an event years after it happened…. Still caught up in crying jags years after the death…. Still looking for someone to blame…. Searching for statuses or photos on social media from the time surrounding that hard moment and thus keep reliving it…. Still picking at the scabs, rubbing the scars raw, refusing to move forward….

That’s wrong.

It disturbs me when I read a post or an article airing grief or an offense written in such a way as to make that grief or offense sound fresh when it isn’t. It bothers me to see people stuck in mourning mode. I know what that feels like. I know the rage, the bitterness, the crippling nature of the tears. I also know that it can reach a point when the sorrow feels comfortable and even righteous. “How can anyone really expect me to move on? They don’t understand!”

Meanwhile, friendships fade and families suffer. Children are confused at best, neglected or abused at worst because Mom or Dad won’t come out of the fog. The boss wonders how to handle this newly-volatile employee. God becomes seemingly distant because we make an idol out of that which has been lost. We worship at altars of death and decay.

My friend, this should not be so.

A gentleman in my Sunday school class said something very interesting yesterday: “Every day is a holiday. You can choose to be happy.” There’s a lot of truth in that statement. In the immediacy of sorrow, there’s nothing to smile about. That is for certain. But as the days pass and the heart bleeds a little less with each pump, we are faced with a choice. Do we let God do the work of healing and comfort, or do we spit in His eye and rip open the wound time and again?

I am the last person on earth who will tell you that depression or anxiety put you in the “Too Far Gone” column. I won’t tell you how to mourn. I don’t believe that feelings are sinful – but what we do with them can be. The pain should be diminishing, however slowly, as the days pass. This is a great gift from the One who overcame the world, a store of fresh mercy from the One who never promised there would be no trouble.

Embrace Him, dear one.

Let the darkness go.