Making Friends with Despair
It was another Sunday, another weekend, another week. Another endurance of medical problems, illness, financial struggles and despair. I thought life was going to be different than this. I never imagined that at nearly 40 I would continually be facing greater and greater challenges.
On our weekend date, my husband and I drove around a lot. We talked a lot. I cried, he doesn’t like that. He was frustrated with my despair. I didn’t like that. I have this burden I have been carrying, this load of worry, of struggle, of stress, of anguish. I am carrying the load of nurturing our four children, of providing financial and emotionally. And when my husband felt better after a string of health crisis, I cracked. It is as if, everything I am carrying can be “ours” and I lose it.
I have been trying. So. Hard.
I read, and and I pray, I write and and I say… all in the name of freeing this feeling of despair. It creeps in like a sneaky child, it stays like a sticky slime, it laughs like the crackling of a melting witch, it grasps and clings like a desperate, shunned lover.
It pulls me down into a weight of sorrow, of grief and loss. But is this mine? Where did it come from? I know I am meant for more. For greater life than all of this loss. There is so much to be grateful for. So much to be thankful for. So much to work towards.
Today I am working on making friends with despair.
Why? Trying to push it away, pretend its not there, or expel it through venom only anchors it to my soul. It may go away momentarily, but comes back like a stretched and tight elastic band, snapping me into the past’s pain with startling accuracy. If I can make friends, and understand the gifts of this feelings, then I can let it go, and learn from the experience.
One wanderer’s ending……
A few weeks ago, a friend from our previous neighborhood posted on social media that her father had passed away. She spoke poignantly of the grief she felt. But didn’t include the details of his abandonment, her estrangement from him, his divorce from her mother, and the subsequent events in his life.
I called a friend and the worst possible scenario came into light. He took his own life. In the years prior to his passing, his despair anchored him more and more deeply into the darkness. I can imagine Lucifer’s minions laughing as they pulled tight the chords of hopelessness and fear. Upon an unexpected meeting with a mutual friend, this man choose to walk away, not even allowing a passing conversation of friendly hellos.
What does it take to come to that place? What orchestration of deviousness is required to devise a finale of such tumultuous magnitude? What feelings lead the carnal man to feel self loathing required enough to snuff the flame of life, in exchange to abandon life’s misery? Despair.
The evening memorial service was a gathering of friends and families, on top of Wasatch Boulevard’s mountain park. The pavilion opened its view to the east, overlooking the base of Lone Peak Mountain. The spring landscape, which had been plentifully watered all winter with snow was budding in a blanket of greenery.
A beautiful arrangement of jewel toned flowers were posted on top of the picnic table at the front of the gathering place, next to a large picture of this man when he was in his early 20s. At a time decades earlier, you could see the light in his eyes, and a hope so brightly strewn in his countenance, that his entire life was ahead.
It was his oldest daughter that lead the short program. It was her expression of gratitude for all the support and outpouring of love that cracked the facade of a friendly gathering and made way for the communal grief that hung in the late-spring air. There was an unspoken acknowledgement of the method, without touching the details or motivation. The speakers celebrated his life without shaming his suffering or commitment for ending it.
The feeling of regret knocked so profoundly. It was a feeling of regret that he didn’t feel in life the love and support that his children felt at his passing. His daughter was overcome with emotion, as she expressed the great love that she felt from others, both for her dad, and for them.
This man loved Christmas. We ended the program with a congregational song of “Silent Night.” While that song immediately takes me to a time and place of cold weather, and warm cocoa, it also transports me to a place of warm Mediterranean air, rock walls, and donkey transportation.
Millennia ago Jesus Christ’s grand entrance into his majestic mortal realm came via suffering, poverty and exclusion. It was in that entrance of humility that our ultimate divinity can be born. It was through his choice of suffering that our darkest forms of grief can be healed.
“Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright.” It was in the song of that holy night that our melancholy harmonies pulled angels earthbound to accentuate our grief and they transformed it into eternal hope; for all our loved ones. Despite depression, despair and even death.
I am NOT alone.
Five years ago my nephew got baptized. We gathered as family in their stake building. After the baptism was complete at the font, we all went into the primary room. This bright young man was being confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. A circle of priesthood bearers stood round him, as his sat up in his chair. Each man help the brother to his left on his far shoulder; with his right hand extended forward, with his palm on his head. They were encircled, united and funneling the power of the priesthood, through the authority vested by Jesus Christ. This young boy was confirmed and given a blessing.
My toddler was restless. She was needy and clingy, so I stood up from the crowd and stood at the door. This gave her more space to wiggle and to make noise, and I could still make witness to the message and spirit of the day. I felt an overpowering love fill the room. Their was a unity amongst those brothers that can only be felt as hearts as sanctified through the spirit. He was encircled, as with the fiery angels that we read about in the Book of Mormon. I couldn’t hear his message, because I needed to hear my own.
At times in my life I have felt broken, I have felt abandoned, I have felt alone. I have felt unable to do all that is required. I have felt isolated, as I feared using my own voice in standing up in courage and vulnerability.
I have looked into my future not sure how I would overcome the challenges and weaknesses of my frame and situation. At that time in my life I felt the weight of crushing grief at the death of my sweet Grandma Joy. She was such a light and an anchor to me. I missed her terribly.
The spirit spoke to me with such fervor and reverence. I could not deny it. The voice was low and assured. It was calming and stable. It was grounding and divine.
“You are not alone Sarah.”
My thoughts raced to the scene before me, sentinels of God’s throne surrounding a young boy, whose life mission and purpose are yet to be revealed. Priesthood bearers with different names, encircled me, in the same power and authority not too many years prior.
My ears, and heart were pounding, as I recognized the voice of the Holy Ghost, and my heart was tuned to the reality of a spiritual realm, of guardians and sentinels on my behalf.
“…..you never have been alone and you never will be.”
In all my years of both sorrow and happiness; in creation and worry. In mothering and wifing, and learning, and realizing that road my ancestors walked before….. I was never alone.
I will never be.
These trials and challenges, are for my good, and I am blessed with more happiness and joy than I have felt in sorrow.
Despair, what can I learn from you? What is your gift?
- Despair inspires longing towards my Savior. This feeling of helplessness encourages stretching towards heaven.
- Despair gives me opportunity to experience pain, both physical, emotional and spiritual. That pain invites me to also feel compassion for others and empathy for their human experience.
- Despair gives me motivation to ask for help, to receive guidance and find mentors that can help me see past my current obstacles and see my possibility for the future.
- Despair lives in extremes, which means that there are fewer areas without choice. I am required to act; to move forward or to fail.
- On the canvas of life despair is the contrast, the shadow, the outline, for which brightness can be appreciated.
