Why I Listen

Why Blog

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress;
my eye wastes away from grief,
my soul and body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my misery,
and my bones waste away. (Ps. 31: 9-10)

So writes the Psalmist. The wasting of grief, the Hebrew word in both instances here is ashesh. The old King James translates it as consuming—grief so profound it consumes the body and the bones, the soul and the eyes. All human strength fails and only the grace of God offers rescue and relief.

I write because there is nothing left of my own strength, only the grace of God has lifted me above the sorrow and the sighing of a life spent dwelling in the valley of the shadow.

Life’s shadow, its sufferings and its sorrows come in many forms. For many children born into the love of adoption, myself included, there is shadow of an unspoken grief that speaks eloquent testimony to the endurance of our most early bond of love. From there the journey of this shadow came to my father lost, even before his death at all to early of an age, to an illness which slowly sucked his life even before it ceased his breath. And with his illness came the shadow of my mother lost, as well, long before her time to the ravages of alcoholism and its violent speech. Her life too dripped slowly away ending long before it’s due. After my father died all too soon, I their only child, before reaching the age of full majority, became the keeper of her life adrift in alcohol’s squalling seas—her Power of Attorney for health and goods, a mantel which quivers even the most experienced and mature.

All this while finishing an undergraduate degree in Religion and an M. Div. from a seminary a proper distance from her home.

In my marriage our three children die before they even drew a breath. In carrying the second I almost bled to my death upon the bathroom floor and at that same fate nodded with the conception of the third. All my living in those days contained the shadow of this threat as long as we tried to conceive.

I know now, but knew only then in the most hidden parts of me from myself, that for many years my husband carried on serial affairs with women trusted to his care as pastor of their congregations. When finally that knowing came to light one Sunday afternoon as I entered the empty church approaching his office door, there was nothing left to do but save myself, from the dark shadow of our lives and face the even deeper fear, Kierkegaard’s defiant despair at willing not to be myself, alone and suffering all hope of future finally dead. No parents or siblings to comfort me or ease this dark transition into the shadow world of the living of my days in grief of ever sharing heart and breath and life and hope with the child for whom I had so long longed and risked my life for the loving of one as yet untimely born.

In the desperation of my despairing heart, I turned to the pastor of my own church for comfort and support, for hope and help in the living of those dark days. His advice to me was to join another church where I would find more single people. In the dishevelment of my pain, believing I misunderstood his intent, I persisted over many months in pursuit of what I would, in time, come to know was not within him to impart. Unknowingly, I turned for compassion and support trusting my life in some of its deepest and darkest hours to a man whose office door was closed on a darkness which paralleled my own. Clergy sexual misconduct is a vile and evil thing which seeps its tentacles of betrayal and suffering, of abandonment and grief into every nook and cranny of every longing heart it touches.

Though my pastor did not violate my by body, with the help of our denomination’s local officials who knew of the affair he was having during the time I was seeing him for pastoral care and helped him keep our entire congregation in his darkness, his ignoble counsel, and my local denominational leaders violations as fiduciaries of my spiritual and emotional safety and wellbeing within the church, broke within me so many things I could not count the cost.

In the wreckage of this deep despair I journey even further into deaths shadows still and lost so many other things which were dear to me that nothing but my God could save me from the wasting of its consuming grief. And so I write of the grace which finds me on these dark shadows paths and leads into green pastures offering me rest beside still waters. In this blessedness of God my soul finds restore and the journey now within my heart prays seeking always God’s rod and staff, protection and guidance, for the living of my days. So I listen for grace wherever it is spoke. Amen.