A Doxology in Darkness - Chapter 1 - Screaming

Sharon June 18th, 2008

Wailing is one thing, but vocal cord ripping shrieks of pain are another.

I drove down the road, screaming until my sides ached, and my throat felt as though it were sure to bleed if I continued much longer. As I began to pound the steering wheel, the inarticulate screams took the shape of words, and I was stunned to hear those words were directed straight at God.

“You aren’t good!!” I shrieked. “You’re a liar! You’re not good! You aren’t kind! It’s all a lie!!! You don’t want good things for me!! You aren’t good -you aren’t good -you aren’t good!

You LIAR-LIAR-LIAR-LIAR!!!”

This tirade went on and on, until I lost my voice entirely. I was beyond consolation, and had completely lost it. All my good little Christian girl masks had burned to ash and blown away in the hot breath of my rage and pain.

After some time, once I had absolutely nothing left in me, I quieted down. Spent and in even greater pain than I had been before the outburst, my heart timidly queried, “Where did that come from?”

Indeed, where did that come from? How did I get here? After all, just two months prior I had been in love. And not just any old love, but my first truly happy, and what I perceived to be healthy love. Sadly, I didn’t meet him until I was 33 years old. Pretty late in life to finally find your first love.

Also pretty late in life to have that love doomed to failure.

There had, of course, been other men in my life. In fact, as long as I can remember, I had been playing the little girl’s fairy tale game. I had been looking for my Prince Charming, to scoop me up on his white steed, and gallop us both away into domestic bliss. I thought that’s what was supposed to happen. It was, wasn’t it? I mean, wasn’t it?

It’s no wonder that from the time I was a young teen, I kept running into twisted and perverted forms of this storybook theme. I would find the brave warrior type, and would thrill as he cavorted around slaying evil dragons. Yet, much to my dismay, he would often walk up to me and slay me as well. Or he would sometimes swagger right past, brushing me aside on his way back to castle hearth and ale. It was all quite baffling to me.

Yet, I kept searching for that noble man of men.

Finally, after my latest bout with an ambivalent knight who played jousting games with my heart and mind for two years, I met him.

My “prince.” The one I could not believe was real, due to the way he treated me, the way he respected and nurtured me. I just kept rubbing my eyes, expecting to wake up from the dream. I kept looking for chinks in his armor which would afford me a glimpse into some dark secret, or an unforgivably ugly trait poised to pop its head out and roar.
But no. He was indeed a nice guy.

In fact, Tom was not just a nice guy, but a guy I adored. A guy I wanted to grow old with. A guy I wanted to sit on the porch with, and rock in our rocking chairs at 85 years old, reminiscing on what an amazing adventure life had been. I wanted to sit and laugh with him about all our blessed times past. This was the guy.

So why was it doomed to failure? Hard to imagine, isn’t it? What could be so dreadfully awful that such a sweet partnership could find its demise? It’s very simple, really, and yet one of the most complicated things I’ve ever had to deal with.

Tom was an agnostic. And I, a servant of Christ.

When I explain this to people, I can always hear a collective gasp from Christians who think this is such a huge “no-no,” that they have absolutely no pity on my plight. They straighten their proper backs, and hoist their chins up, so they can get a nice long view at me down their noses. They take a deeply righteous breath before staunchly proclaiming, “Well, you asked for it. You never should’ve started dating him. Now we’ll pray for a nice Godly young man for you.”

I don’t blame them. I used to think the same way. “Why, I would never date a non-Christian,” I would say, “I wouldn’t bother.” It makes me laugh now. I was so sure. This is easy to attest to until you meet someone you could’ve never imagined could be so perfectly suited to you. Someone so entirely what you had been waiting for your whole life, that you just choose to believe this has to be who God has chosen for you.

What I didn’t bargain on was Tom’s heart. That wild card of free will. I could not have foreseen just how much he would not want God.

I guess I believed that because we were so in love, he would somehow connect with my Lord on a level he had not experienced before. And I think that in some ways, he actually did. During the nineteen months we were together, I saw some very certain flickers of hope. At one point, he even prayed to God, with me nowhere around. He volunteered to attend church with me for a while. He would even ask me, almost every day, what God had said to me during my devotional times. It certainly seemed he was reaching out, and softening somewhat to God’s beckoning.

But when all was said and done, he hardened his heart, and ran from the truth. He decided we were “on different paths,” and there was no hope of ever seeing eye-to-eye. And since marriage was out of the question for me if he was not a believer, he simply gave up.

And so it was that on October 28th, as we sat in his apartment, he uttered the simple words, “I think I’m ready to break up.”

My heart froze, I began to shake, and I lost the ability to articulate my racing, screaming thoughts.

It was over.

In that terrible moment, it felt as though my hopes were brutally murdered. My “prince” had decided to resign his position as steward of my heart, and leave the “kingdom” we had started to build. He had made his choice to leave me there, on my cold and isolated throne, with yet another broken fairy tale under my belt.

As in so many times past, here I was again, and this one felt worse than any other before. I could not imagine making it through that solitary night, much less any foreseeable future.

But I did. Because Jesus had bigger plans for me. As He does for us all.

So here begins my story. My year of despair leading to hope, darkness leading to enlightenment, and a lifetime of dysfunctional thinking about romance leading to new purpose and contentment.

I learned that loss is not always a negative thing. Indeed, it can sometimes be the very gateway to our freedom. God allowed me to experience a heartbreak of monumental proportions, while in full fellowship with Him the whole time. Because of His great love for me, He knew what had to be done. He knew the magnitude of what He was about to lead me through in the year following the crushing blow.

He saw this year for what it truly was: The year of my re-birth.

My new birthday was October 28th.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 8:27 am and is filed under Anger, Christianity, Dating, God, Jesus, Loss, Pain, Relationships, Religion and Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.