Speaking Truth and Light to the Silent Darkness

“I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of  Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’  I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.”

~ Isaiah 45:19

Lately, I’ve been feeling listless, restless, uneasy, empty, aimless and out-of-sorts. I’ve felt this way at other times in life, usually in relation to fleeting or unfortunate circumstances; a temporary downturn. We all have them.

But as I look more closely at this moody word list, it begins to resemble a quiver of arrows, all pointing toward one, encompassing, emotional theme: purposelessness. Or so it seems. I know I was not created without purpose, and neither were you, but honestly it is how I’ve been feeling for longer than I care to. Pondering this thought a little further, I sadly determine I’ve hit on something significant.

I’ve battled depression most of my adult life, probably longer, with subtle signs evident as early as high school. I see this only now, looking back. I wish I’d known then what I know now (don’t we all), as I could have interpreted the world around me, and those in it, differently. I would have understood that my terrifying fear of abandonment was a perfectly expected reaction to the periodic silent treatment I endured in my youth, and the on again-off again absence of affirmation, conversation, and relationship that was utilized as a form of discipline. Silence effectively told me I’d been a disappointment, although I didn’t always know why. But emotional abandonment isn’t discipline. It is wrong, plain and simple. Routinely cutting the lines of communication in a valued relationship, especially with a young child, is traumatizing. In my case, it laid the groundwork for developing a mindset that emotional control over my life belonged to others, not me; toying with my emotions became permissible and ripe for the taking. Further, it set the stage for my people-pleasing propensity and this became my mission, because I would do almost anything to make the pain of silence and rejection end. Every human being comes into this world with a need for love, affection and acceptance, and being ignored by a significant other isn’t conducive to any of that. By school age the silent treatment was a well-established form of “communication” that grew more frequent as I entered my teen years. I learned early that communication can happen with a voice…or with no voice at all. (Something occurred to me just this very minute: I have loved the written word since my youth. I prefer it over verbal communication a thousand fold. I find that ironic; isn’t it amazing how, even late in life, the lightbulb can suddenly come on?)

Anyway, growing up, there were other instances of implied abandonment, or the outright-stated-threat of leaving that I won’t go into at this time, but never-the-less they escalated my fears. As time marched into adulthood and I left home, this nearly-all-consuming fear of losing loved ones kept me chained to a controlling spouse, who did his homework and learned well how to keep me tethered. He studied the people-pleasing aspects of my personality and took full advantage. Ironically, it was the laying open of my heart and soul that taught him where I was vulnerable. He learned well the lessons that I unwittingly divulged as I shared stories of my youth. I thought in confiding in him that I was running to safety, a harbor in the storm. I naively believed my purpose was to take care of him and love all his demons away. If I could somehow make up for everything he lacked or lost in boyhood, then he would be happy, and by extension, I could be happy. But once he learned this about me, he began to expect that his happiness was my purpose. Just as in childhood, my job, my purpose, was to appease certain others, and in this case, him. I was to be present and accounted for, even if he wasn’t (and he often wasn’t).  If I failed to be pleasing in any way (perish the thought), then his sadness or anger or other myriad emotions became my fault. I shouldered the blame and the punishment: silence, shouting, shoving and leaving. And that, my friends, isn’t simply an unkind person; it is the essence of betrayal by a master manipulator impersonating a “husband”. It’s an insidious malignancy of torture that eats away a person’s soul until they feel so small and empty the only thing alive is a heart, faintly beating in the chest, and lungs that weakly breathe in and out. Consequently, I would often recite to him this old Mother Goose rhyme:

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,

Had a wife and couldn’t keep her,

Put her in a pumpkin shell,

And there he kept her very well.

It was a favorite nursery rhyme of mine as a child because I loved pumpkins, but in truth, I had no idea what it meant. Later I came to realize I was once again held captive under a heavy hand, this time by a controlling, alcoholic, narcissistic abuser who reeled in the catch of his life, gutted me and put my carcass on the mantle above the fire; the trophy wife he could display like a prized, hunted, and very dead animal. And from the outside no one could see that I, indeed, was hollow.

Bottom-line, I’ve made some poor decisions in my life. Not all of them, but when I did, they were significant. For instance, why did I marry this man in the first place? The answer is important (and I hope this saves even one person from misery!)  The reason was to flee a perceived lack of control over my life as a young, single woman. The root that took hold so long ago from the punishing silence was now bearing fruit. I was living at home in my early twenty’s, and still under (perceived) authority even at that age. I respected and obeyed all the rules of the home, I worked, and I attended college studying to be a nurse. But even though I demonstrated extreme responsibility, I wasn’t “allowed” to move out into independence unless I married…so I did.  I married the boyfriend of the day, a mistake I long regret, and I am in need of healing and self-forgiveness. So let’s get to that.

At the beginning of this essay I listed a variety of emotions I was having; it was an effort to pinpoint the root of my feelings. I studied myself and searched deep, asking myself hard questions I felt to be important. When I arrived at my particular answer, I realized something else. Having battled depression and anxiety over many decades, I’ve come to know what comforts me, in addition to having developed some coping skills. And through it all, I know two things to be certain (hopefully I know more than two things, but we’ll start with these)

1. Emotions are a gift. They don’t always feel like a gift, but we need them, and in fact, they are a God-given benefit of life. They mostly come in pairs of polar opposites with a smattering of emotional variables in between. I say they are a gift because they help us gauge what’s happening around us; they give us clues about what’s going right, and indicate when something has gone awry and needs fixing. I’m not a psychologist, but I am a nurse, a woman, and a survivor of abuse who is keenly aware of her surroundings, including the people in it. For the sake of survival, I’ve learned to not discount gut instincts and emotions as I did in my early years, but to instead, dig deep to either address the roots of my discomfort in a given moment, or to embrace peace when a sense of security tells me it’s safe to relax. This balance is sometimes hard to achieve; to discern truth and reality from fickle feelings, but it’s accurate to say that our God-given emotions are, indeed, a gift to help us navigate life once we learn to “read” them and heed the warning signs they give. Then we can speak to it; no more cowering to fear.
2. The second thing I know is while emotions are good and necessary they can’t be trusted to translate to absolute They can be tricky and give us a skewed view of reality, or of ourselves, if we allow them to take control of our thoughts and senses. It’s ok to feel what we feel, question why we feel it, and give that part of ourselves a voice, but before spiraling into a dark abyss of emotions, or casting off to the outer reaches of an emotional stratosphere, we need to look at facts, touch base with reality as best we can, and weigh both our emotions and our circumstances (reality), to arrive at a place of balance. Only then can we be healthy and confident enough to live in purpose and carry out our calling, boldly declaring truth in love to a world in great need.

Remember when I said I wished I knew then what I know now? Well, that required me to ask, “What do I know; what have I learned?” And I think coming to understand people and past events, in context, does help us to slowly forgive, heal, and let go so we can ultimately move on. God wants us free, not encumbered by the weight of a burdensome past. Putting circumstances and the people involved, into context, is a way for us to work through and hopefully reconcile our past. As an example, note the difference in someone making an unfortunate choice in word or deed (or lack of words), but later coming to understand the person was struggling with their own brokenness and was doing their best to do right in this world, with the set of tools given them. Their intent wasn’t malice, it was ignorance; still not right, but understandable. Conversely, what about the person who is also quite broken, but who literally thrives by ruling over others, sucking the lifeblood from them, draining the essence of who they are and were created to be? When I say control I’m not talking about proper authority or leadership; I’m talking about the kind of control that suffocates and destroys. I’m talking about suppression and subjugation, gas-lighting and fear, to dominate and diminish. That takes the matter to an entirely different dimension, isolated and dark. I know it did for me. This latter relationship is now relegated to my past, but everyday it’s up to me to continue moving forward by “taking every thought captive,” making my thoughts and emotions obey the truth of Christ and who His word says I am. Specifically, 2 Corinthians 10: 5 says, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Situationally, I have moved forward into a new and loving marriage, but my fractured mind and soul are still healing. Maybe I will forever be in a state of healing as long as I’m this side of heaven. But what I’m saying is that it was helpful for me to set emotion aside for a bit while discerning matters of intent; to look at people with an eye of compassion, as well as with an eye for historical truth regarding their personhood. Are past actions and behaviors characteristic of who they have always been? If so, are these characteristics of good merit…or of ill will? The answer to that question says more than anything; for good or for bad. In this way it’s possible to reach a place of self-forgiveness for the questionable life choices we may have made, while also giving us the ability to place others in God’s hands. When we release these people, while moving into our rightful standing with the God who created us, our hands are open and able to take hold of the unique life He fashioned for us, and is leading us into, and our lips are ready to speak light into the darkness and truth into the silence.

I’ve been out-of-sorts for weeks, as I said earlier. I errantly concluded that my lost and aimless feelings boiled down to a lack of purpose.  All my life I’ve either literally, physically taken care of others (in addition to myself), or others have cared for me, as in the case of childhood. As an adult, I had a 30 year nursing career in a variety of settings. I also worked in childcare centers, and raised my own children. That’s a span of 42 years…more than four decades spent in the direct care of others. And, prior to high school graduation and college, though still a child, I had to “care” for certain people. I had to take care to not offend, take care to be super attentive, and take care to be the social safety net for ones much older than me, requiring a disregard for my own developmental life-stage. I learned to cope with being guilt-ridden for making my own life choices from time to time, (sometimes it was permitted, sometimes not, and I could never figure out or memorize the rules on this). In fact, I had to get very good at “reading” the room and “reading” the mood of those in it, because being clairvoyant or omniscient was evidently also a childhood requirement, the lack of which could land me back in silent treatment jail (and no, I am not kidding!)

In the last few years I am remarried, retired, and the kids are grown. There remain ghosts from of my past, but I am no longer required to jump through emotional hoops or rules. I do occasionally jump through an emotional hoop-myriad “voluntarily” as a knee-jerk reaction to certain words or situations that remind me of (trigger) my past. In that area I will probably always struggle. But what I am convinced of today, more than ever before, is that my life does indeed have purpose (All lives have purpose. We are created for purpose.) The unspoken message early on was that my purpose, my reason for being on this earth, was to serve this person or that person, but not all persons and not persons of my own choice. Failing to measure up to the standards set for me resulted in punishment and pain (and that topic is entirely a different writing for another day), but Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn it (punish it) because Jesus came to seek and save that which is lost (John 3:17, Luke 19:10).  Jesus has a purpose too, and it isn’t that He’s out to punish me when I make disappointing choices. His purpose is the opposite…to assure me I am not lost, but safe in His great, big, gentle-giant hands. He rescues me because I am imperfect, not the other way around. And never does He hold those imperfections against me, any more than I would’ve scolded one of my little ones for falling down as they learned to walk. All He wants, after He picks us up and brushes us off, is to try again. Without shaming or condemnation, He lovingly buoys us and cheers us on in remaining purposeful in life, in relation to others, and in regard to the journey we have been asked to travel. Until He calls us home, keep speaking into the silence and calling out truth wherever the darkness tries to hide it.

“For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”  

~ Ephesians 5:8-14 (ESV)