The Worst, Most Important Year of My life

I’m writing this from the most uncomfortable chair I’ve ever sat on. Wrapped up in a blanket. Looking outside a window that displays a snowy landscape, deep in the mountains of a country in the Middle East that I’m not supposed to be in…you know, that really “hot” place. With not much else to do on this day, I steep in the cliche of year-end reflective thoughts. At one point in 2017, I uttered the words “this is the best year of my life”. By year’s end, I muttered the opposite. A good friend gave me some wise advice after I had just experienced the failure that would pivot my outlook on the year. He said “don’t make any major life decisions for the rest of the year”. Easy enough, I thought. The end of the year was only four months away. What I underestimated was the difficulty those four months would bring. Ironically, it was four months of intense celebration for others that were closest to me, experiencing some of their most beautiful moments in life: engagements, weddings, pregnancies, births, and various freedoms. While difficult to muster up even the most counterfeit of happiness, what was most humiliating was my own belief that I was nothing. That I was simply just left alone. All my journeys with the Lord of faith and exercise, how ashamed I was to be broken down so quickly. You see, I’m really great in my knowledge of the Lord. I’m an expert in facilitating the lecture from my mind to my heart; teaching my heart what to believe. But this time, my heart was leading, and I felt out of control. My most used words for the ending of 2017 were in the likes of “stupid”, “unhinged”, “unstable”, “dissension”. In secret, and sometimes reluctantly in the company of others, I cried. Again and again. With that surfaced a self-imposed shame on myself as a “man”. We’re not supposed to deal with things in this way. But social construct, and my own logic was completely overpowered by my feelings. I had lost all composure.

 

I just wanted to run. I knew I was going to be in pain, but I would rather be in isolated pain, than to be misery in the company of happiness. It felt cruel, and I wanted nothing to do with it. As I rang in the new year, my friend’s advice was void, and I could finally begin making the changes in my life that I so badly wanted to make. The most pressing of them was to get as far away as possible, away from all of this. On the first day of 2018, I couldn’t stop thinking of my exit strategy. How I would just leave it all behind. How I would cope with leaving the people and things I cared about, and the excuse that I would give. But almost a week later, as I sit here 7,000 miles away from home, I can tell you that what I want most right now is to be back in the company of my friends. I want to be home.

 

But can a life-decision be made so primitively? Can a simple census really lead to a solution for what feels so heart-enchantingly awful? What if those reasons fail? Or worse, what if those reasons get tired, give up, forget? Choosing this path seems to take away control of my portion, and place it in the very thing that left me so shockingly rejected: people.

 

Yet my resolve: sweeter is the life where true friendship is a risk. The unknown of friendship carries an un-promised hope that is stronger than a relief in the promised-security of solitude.

 

I do have good friends, but God is my best friend. During a time of turmoil, it is clear to me that He is the only one that can promise He won’t reject, abandon, or forget me. If anything, I am at least grateful for a season of grief where I have discovered a new facet of who He is and how He works.  Jesus, in Gethsemane, still asked for the Father to change His plans. On the cross, Jesus asked the Father why he was forsaken. Yet, Jesus never lost the ultimate hope that was driving him. He was feeling hopeless, yet still with hope. I find so much solace in the fact that God never safeguarded Jesus from the feelings of despair. The seemingly impossible partnership between grief and hope is beginning to make sense to me. So, I will wait expectantly, for whatever it is He will do, even in the midst of what I choose to believe is a purposeful grief.