Into the shadow lands……………..
It was, I fear inevitable.
I've been ill. The rejoicing in good health, energy, strength could
only continue so long, until I came unto my own shadow lands. Outside, it is
morning, winds whistling through the trees, sending the red, yellowed leaves of
my trees spilling down as the chimes on the back deck send their frantic chorus
through the wooden hills. For weeks I have felt my strength ebbing out, with
dull, throbbing headaches making smiling an awkward feat of will forcing facial
muscles into a contortion of sorts I can only hope passes as a greeting.
Finally, it was too
much and as I sat listening to clients at work I realized I was going to vomit
or pass out, possibly in tandem and I went home hoping to reach my bed as a
refuge from the waves of sickness cascading over me. For a while, too weak to
venture far from the bathroom floor or my bed I lived in a land where the sick
feeling drowned out other realities and I hovered, captured in the momentum of
unpleasantness it controlled. There was a point in feeling ill where I
absolutely didn't care if I lived or died, I was too weak to care. It is now a
few days later, and I am still weak, but no longer drowning in the sea of
nausea and headaches.
During these weeks, I've had an epiphany of sorts, a realization I've perhaps blocked out with
boundless hope, and ceaseless believing that eventually things would turn for
the better, that I would experience joy in the morning. The fact of the matter,
the sum total of my reality is: I am not
happy. I’m grateful for a having food, a place to live and those essentials
that make up the critical elements of sustaining life; but I am not happy. Instead
I am disappointed in life, in my family, in my career, in my ability to achieve
worthwhile goals. You name it and there’s a great big disappointment written
all over it. No, I’m not wallowing in a sea of pity, far worse I’ve woken up in
the sea of reality that realizes at age 63 I’ve made some bad choices, I can’t
fix, God can’t fix, and I’m stuck with.
I had a dream several
nights ago, I was trying to find something, somewhere, it wasn't clear, and
then suddenly I was in an opening and everywhere I looked there were red brick
walls. No doorways, no openings only red brick walls. Ah, there’s symbolism
there for sure. The fact of the matter is, I feel trapped. Trapped by a house I
can’t sell; trapped by the desire to travel, explore the world and realizing
I’ve spent my money on my kids; trapped by a career where there is little
success, little or no thanks and desolate, desolate human stories and crisis; every
day, every week; unending human suffering due to addiction, gangs, abuse, and human degradation of all sorts, sizes, and every imaginable evil. Oh, I’m not in
“burn out”, I’m more in painful, high def reality.
And so, I've put aside
my normal daily routine of reading my comforting, encouraging devotionals and I
found another book to read or kind of, it found me. I sort of felt like going
to my book cases and finding something new, (no not an audible voice), just a
nudging. I looked at one book, another, none seemed right until a book I never
noticed seemed to call to me, “This one,” the inaudible voice seemed to say,
“Read this one.” When Invisible Children
Sing, by Dr. Chi Huang. It’s a new book. I don’t know where I got it, maybe in
my mothers books, maybe a library book sale,
I don’t’ know. The quote on the
back cover gives me some clue of what lies within,
“To know the street children
is to have one’s life transformed.”
I grab a couple more books from my shelf. Beautiful books
with poems of inspiration set on pages decorated with artistic drawings of
nature, home and family scenes. I realize I will need something to counteract
the harsh reality of the content of the other book. These poetry books are ones
my mother owned. These books are ones printed and sold by the Salesian
Missions, http://www.salesianmissions.org/ whose stated purposed on the inside cover it two-fold; 1. To offer
comfort, encouragement and support to the readers and 2. To help support its
outreach to hurting children in over 120 countries.
I pick up the book about street children and
realize, this is going to be a tough
read. As a child, I always told my mom that someday I was going to grow up and
work in an orphanage. I was going to be a missionary. A kind of scary feeling
creeps into my awareness, why this book now? Isn’t what I’ve been doing for the
last six years close enough to being a missionary? Being a drug and alcohol counselor pretty
much gets about as down and dirty as you can get. But then is it about dealing with human
suffering or is it about being able to offer the cure for sin-sick souls? Is it about being able to tell someone about
the love of Jesus? The Hope that is in Jesus? The salvation that is in Jesus?
I’m not sure but I pick
up the book and read the first chapter. Dr. Huang, takes a year sabbatical from
Harvard medical school and flies to Bolivia to be the physician to a girls and
boys orphanage. The first chapter introduces us to a child he treats. At the
end of the chapter, I feel sort of sick. The life of the girl he treats isn’t
all that foreign to me. I’ve worked with cutters; I’ve worked with young people
caught up in exchanging sexual favors for drugs. But somehow, how he
graphically describes her medical conditions makes it seem so much more
horrible. I can’t read more than a chapter today.
This morning, a little
stronger I read the second chapter, along with some of the Salesian poems. The
second chapter is as brutally graphic as the first. I set the book down, determined
I will not flinch but face the realities painted within the pages of this book.
A chapter a day, no more, and no less. Somewhere in these pages, I sense an
awareness will develop of something I’m supposed to do. Maybe not; been
wrong before. But for the present moment, I am committed. I’m not sure where this new journey will lead
me. Am I just accumulating more data about the sorry state of our world? Am I
only still being a kind of participant in other people’s suffering through kind
of a passive, untouchable position of safety? Safety ( that’s wearing on the
nerves, exhausting of the spirit) but safety none-the-less.
I've thought I've been
in the trenches doing what I’ve been doing these last six years. But a nagging
doubt assails me that reading this book will reveal that there is a whole world
of desperate situations that makes my corner of the world look like easy
street.
The wind continues to
blow the trees. The late fall sun paints the branches with golden light. My grandson, a little frightened by my recent
illness brought me a lighted candle and set it on the desk in my room a few
minutes ago. Its golden flame flickers as the drafts in the house batter it
about. A small symbol of his caring, it makes me happy to see its glow. Essentially I’ve been mom and dad to him his
whole life and it must be a little scary to see me so ill even though he kinds
of covers it up with the “I’m so tough” exterior.
Writing has exhausted
me and I realize I’d better try to rest tomorrow will come sooner than I want
and I must try to be ready to meet the day.
Golden
leaves of summer’s harvest
Grace
the carpet lawn below
Autumn
winds breathe through the valley
Echoes
of a winter’s snow
Purpose
born of pride and passion
Flame
renewed from seasons past
Future
burns with unknown pathways
Cries
of anguish, sorrows gasp.
“When
you did it unto
the
least of these my brethren,
you did it unto Me.”
Jesus
