Starting Over
Van Gogh, Wheatfields With Crows, 1890, the year of his death
Have you ever rolled out of bed one morning and felt like you’ve stepped into another world? Like maybe your feet wouldn’t hit the floor? Like maybe the walls had moved? Maybe the pictures need realigning? Yikes, maybe I need some strong coffee.
The further you get into the morning you realize things have changed, dramatically, for both you and your wonderful wife. Some illness has struck from nowhere. You didn’t plan this, planner that you are. Who’s in charge, you begin to mutter? Where are we headed now?
You stand in the wheat field with Van Gogh, black crows circling around ominously, the little roadway obscure, the destination unclear. Is that one of Van Gogh’s churches in the distance, the Old Tower perhaps? The road looks rough. You look hard for light shining out across the path. You are always looking for light. This painting, by the way, was painted two months before Van Gogh took his life. Foreboding, yes, but still with a kind of hopefulness we always find in his paintings, some exuberance of life here, don’t you think?
My imagined morning is what happens to so many people suffering from mental illnesses. It feels like an ambush. We see and hear about it more and more every day. Do you too know someone who has been struck by depression, anxiety, addiction, just a general sense of lostness or loneliness or unease, having little energy to carry on, attacked by what the ancients call acedia? Could that be you? Or me?
Sharon and I, like so many others, are seeking help. Even that is not easy in our day. Giving help is not easy either. We may fumble along not knowing what is best. This is totally new territory for so many of us in our society today, but it’s happening all around us.
There are doctors and meds and hospitals, of course, all important, but most of all we hope you find yourself, as we have, surrounded by the love of family, the willingness always to be there, for a conversation, a visit, just a call, whatever. We’re also showered with concern and prayer from so many friends scattered across the country, people and pastors in our church, neighbors in our community.
But I come announcing not all has been bleak, dark though it has been. There have been remarkable rays of light breaking into this darkness. Most of all Sharon and I have found love for each other that is deeper than we have ever known. Maybe we wouldn’t have found that. And then we’ve found the unimaginable comforting presence of God. We have felt as if Jesus has lifted the burden at times, as he promised he would. We often find it a blessing just to live out a normal day. There are the long hugs. There are the smiles breaking out, laughter, joy.
I have spoken at length in the past that joy will often spring out of sorrow. Sounds a little like cliché—until you experience that it’s true.
We’ve turned to one of those foundational passages time and again. We know we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. No better image. Everything has seemed clouded by shadows. But we have also caught that glimpse, that just maybe, just beyond the bend of this rough pathway, there are green pastures and still waters. That’s the promise we can all claim. Those are the images that will give us vision to guide us forward.
I’ve never been a writer or a person or a leader absorbed by darkness and pain. But here, this morning, I just thought my readers deserved to know where I’ve been these past months. I sense my writing will change because we have been changed. We’re trying hard now to rebuild, to begin again, laying new foundations, the foundation of love for each other and for so many others in our lives, the foundation that God will visit us daily. These are the rocks on which we’re building a new house. We’re confident we can rebuild.
If I can share some of this journey with you, I hope it will come across as helpful to you, whenever you might find yourself walking through the valley of the shadows. Let’s remember together those green pastures and still waters. They are there, waiting, promised.