Crossing

“This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don’t bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others.  They’re certainly doing all these things to you.”  p.331, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I think it might be a little bit like the equator.  We know it’s there—we learned about it in geography class.  But it’s not really there.  By that I mean it isn’t a physical line you can clearly see crossing the water somewhere just south of the Hawaiian Islands.  Still, we know the equator is there.  Right?

Such is, I think, this elusive line between raw, wrenching grief over a pain-filled situation and the other side of that line…a place of bitterness and cynicism, a place so consumed by a vision of pain so vast and insurmountable that it takes over a whole life.  We all know people who have crossed that line, and they’re generally not the most cheery folks to hang out with.  We feel their pain and disappointment even in the most mundane daily interactions.  But honestly, our first impulse is to get away from all of that—to avoid them.  And why not?  Constant bitterness and pain repels people; it reminds us of our own pain, perhaps.

So, I’ve been thinking about this, both from the pastor’s perspective of walking with people through deep pain…and from the perspective of feeling around in the desert of my own life to try desperately to find wherever that line might be.  So how do you know when you sail over the equator?  And how do you know when you cross that line between understandable grief and debilitating bitterness?

I confess I don’t know the answer to these questions.  Maybe a map would help?  Perhaps answers are found in the honest presence of loving, challenging voices that push us to move back through the grief to a better future?  But maybe, on the hardest days, the only One to call on is the One who can see all the lines of this life clearly, and who will hold our hands through every step. 

For those days, we offer prayers for guidance and protection:

God of constant presence, watch over us, your people.  Give us courage and safe space to grieve the sadness of our human lives.  And pull us back to safety, we pray, if we venture too close to a bitterness that would swallow us whole.

When we live in our pain, Oh God, sometimes it seems to be all there is for us.  And if bitterness is the view that fills our vision, we can’t see everything else: love, possibility, new life, a future different from the pain of the past.

And we want to see all of those good things, to have our visions filled with your greatest hopes for our lives.

Keep us safely on your side of the line, and help us to trust your tender mercy and constant presence, even when the pain is all we can see.  And, finally, bring us into a new place of mercy and grace, where pain is softened and bitterness nothing but a distant memory.

Amen.