There aren’t words strong enough to emphasize how desperately I needed tonight. The last month of my life has been pure hell. If you were observing from the outside you almost certainly would not have noticed a single thing different, but those who are close saw it and they knew something was very, very wrong. And they were right, something was very wrong. It has wrecked my mental and physical health and left only a husk in its wake.
I’m not going to elaborate on the specifics and details of what was wrong and why, but I was completely derailed and for the first time in decades I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get it back on track. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Fyodor Dostoevsky. He was a 19th century Russian novelist and philosopher whose life was marred by tremendous sorrow and suffering. He lost an infant daughter to pneumonia when she was three months old and he spent four years in a Siberian work camp where he witnessed and experienced horrors daily. He is often mentioned in the list of the greatest authors to ever live and his words that ring truest to me are, “I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt.”
Some who read this will never understand the meaning of those words, and for that I am grateful, but some will and I do. The faith that has never been tested has never been proven. Abraham was blessed after he thought he was going to lose Isaac. Jacob became Israel after he wrestled with God, and walked away with a permanent limp. Flames burn and consume what is worthless, but they purify what is priceless. There simply is no way to purge the dross without first enduring the flames.
This is hard to write — it was far harder to endure — but my faith was truly shaken for the first time in my adult life. I have been through many hard days — times that burned me to the ground and left me sifting through the ashes for what was permanent — but my faith has never wavered. This time it did and it terrified me the way a passenger is terrified when the plane they are flying on suddenly lurches or shakes in an unexpected way. There is no reason or contemplation, there is only existential dread that floods the limbic system with cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. These things aren’t the result of contemplation and decision, they are reactions that spring forth uninvited from places unknown.
The last month I have questioned whether or not I still believed that the message of Jesus that love is the only hope for the world was true and that love is the answer. I was ready to give up on people, on humanity, on life. Not that I was suicidal, but that it seems there simply is no ultimate good in life because there does not appear to be any meaningful and lasting justice in this world. I wasn’t sure that love could make a difference, that love could change the world, that it could change people for the better in any meaningful and permanent way. According to Dostoevsky, that is precisely the definition of hell. "What is hell? The suffering of being no longer able to love." Though I had been warned of this trap by C.S. Lewis, I still fell into it via pitiful and pessimistic thinking. "Hell begins with a grumbling mood" to which Lewis also added "the doors of hell are locked from the inside." So yes, the last month of my life has been pure hell, but...my Lord said I will never leave you or forsake you....not even in hell. I am with you always...even in hell. So tonight I am able to blend my voice with David and sing that my life has been pure hell, but..."you will not leave my soul in hell."
I don’t know how you are reading these words or the conclusions you are drawing from them, but I had all but given up on humanity. And then I attended a wedding. I went on a journey that brought me from my spiritual valley onto a literal mountain top. The wedding was conduced at The Wedding Chapel on the Mountain -- the mountain being Monte Sano, the "mountain of health". I’ve spent the last two days with two families as they prepared the way for their separate lives to become intertwined. I’ve talked at length with the elderly and the young. I’ve participated in the pageantry and the performance that only a wedding can provide. I’ve had long and meaningful conversations with complete strangers, eaten delicious food, observed beautiful decorations, and listened to powerful music. I watched mothers (and fathers) cry, children dance, the elderly laugh, and couples smile. I watched my wife cry as she was overwhelmed by the love and beauty exchanged between bride and groom, between father and daughter, mother and son, and brother and sister.
By performing the ceremony I had a front row seat to everyone in attendance. I saw every glance, every tear hastily wiped away, every smile of contentment, and the peace that settles across the face of so many as they grasp the reality that for just this moment, everything is good in the world. Decades of life converge and compress into a single moment and it all becomes worth it. All the tears, all the fights, all the fears, all the struggles, and suffering is pushed into the background, and the only thing left in focus is love and goodness and joy. It won’t always be like this, but for this one moment in time, it is, and it is profound. Profound enough to lift a man who was ready to give up back to the realms of the divine. I could feel it again tonight. It was palpable and inescapable and I was reminded that love comes through in the end. I was witnessing the birth of powerful memories, memories that will be reflected upon for a lifetime and clung to when life begins to fade into death. For me, it was like being present at the Creation and witnessing the birth of a new star whose light will unendingly travel across the universe and into infinity. That is the power of a love born and love filled moment that traverses into memory.
When the wedding was over my wife and I sat across from one another in a hotel room eating chicken wings and gourmet cheese, listening to music and basking in the afterglow of a wonderful tonight. We mostly sat in silence, but when we did speak it was words of gladness and gratitude. We laughed until it hurt and sat with the contentment of heart that only decades together and complete acceptance can bring. I wondered aloud if people think we are "faking it" when they see us together. I fear I am not the only one who has had their faith in the existence of genuine love shaken. I don't know if people still believe that a husband and a wife can genuinely love one another's company and truly be best friends. Just 30 minutes of uninterrupted, undivided attention together and hope springs eternal in my heart. Tonight I reminisced aloud that in 33 years nothing has really changed. We are still sneaking away for a night, grabbing take out, just to be alone in a hotel and pretend that we are the only people who exist. We did it when we were 17 and we're still doing it at 50. Is this not what heaven is? The ongoing experience and recurrence of all that is good and brings peace and joy in a never ending cycle that is not bound by time? As Leonard Sweet said, "Joy is where the sacred leaks through." What the wedding didn't resurrect, this evening with her did. In the sparse hours that I have her all to myself I experience eternity in a moment, and I know that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
Those words were written by a woman who lived through The Black Plague -- the 14th Century English Christian mystic Julian of Norwich in her book Revelations of Divine Love, which details a series of profound mystical visions she received while near death in 1373. Julian recounted a conversation between herself and God, where she struggled to understand why suffering and sin exist in the world. In her vision, God comforted her with these exact words, "It is true that sin is cause of all this pain; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." The repetition emphasizes the absolute, unending certainty of God's grace and love. It doesn't mean that life will be easy, painless, or free of hardship. Instead, it is the conviction that God’s love is the ultimate reality and will have the final word, ensuring that no suffering is the end of the story. I have known these words for many years, but tonight I knew these words with an intimacy I'd not previously experienced. Long ago Jesus graced a wedding in Cana of Galilee with His presence. It became the stage for His first miracle as God's kingdom broke through from heavenly realms to earthly realities. Tonight, He once again graced a wedding with His presence and turned the bitter waters of my soul into new wine as I was able to catch a faint glimpse through the veil of heaven at the marriage feast of the Lamb and His bride. As the brilliant Tim Keller once wrote, "Christ's miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the fall and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again--a world of peace and justice." Tonight Karl Rahner's observation rings true for me, "The devout Christian of the future will either be a mystic, one who has experienced something, or he will cease to be anything at all.”
Though I speak no language but English, Italian and French lyrics from the playlist on my phone are filling my heart like a gas tank that had been running on fumes. New Orleans born Italian trumpeter Louis Prima — who I first encountered when I was as young as my oldest grandchild is now (4) via his contributions to The Jungle Book soundtrack — summed the day up best: By the little jewelry shop, we'll stop and linger, while I buy a wedding ring for your finger, in the meantime let me tell you that I love you, buona sera, signorina kiss me goodnight. It was a good night, a good night indeed. But it’s more than just a good night. It’s a good life. There is far, far more good than bad if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Another New Orleans trumpet player named Louis — Armstrong, not Prima — reminded me of this as I hummed along with his raspy voice: Every word, every sigh, every kiss, dear, leads to only one thought, and the thought is this, dear! C´est si bon. Truly, it is so good.
Hours later I am sitting on the couch, laptop in hand, watching her sleep, still intoxicated by the romance of the evening, and desperately trying to capture these words and emotions before sleep anesthetizes them. Tonight, at least for one more night, I still believe that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and love never fails. Now I lay me down to sleep, but before I do I say my evening prayers, and I reaffirm my trust in Love, for God is love. I go to sleep choosing to believe, as Tim Keller said in paraphrasing Tolkien, "Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost." In my own feeble way, I'm attempting to convey what David Bentley Hart described far better, "Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience; it is the ability to see again what most of us have forgotten how to see, but now fortified by the ability to translate some of that vision into words, however inadequate.”
I believe Lord. Help my unbelief.
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