The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

Once, in a time that gets further and further away with each passing second, a time so long ago that I would barely recognize myself, but still so near to me that its shadow is constantly in my heart, I was going to kill myself. I'd had enough. The whole entirety of my life felt like a gigantic bruise. At the time I couldn't even remember half the things I'd been through, but their shadows had voices. And they hadn't stopped screaming in a very very long time. And so I'd decided that enough was enough. A plan came to me. I knew what I needed to do.

But something in my head, a voice I'd not heard in a very long time, spoke with a force that made me pause. The awfulness that was in my head was not going to stop should I die. It would only get worse. My body was playing interference with the noise I was hearing at that point. It would only intensify after death. And, for whatever reason, I believed that. But that left me in a bind. Because the noise was still going on, right then, and I remembered asking why on earth I shouldn't just embrace it and let it hollow me out. It wasn't going to stop. I couldn't stop it.

The icon that I bumped into was not this one. But it had a similar facial configuration. The thing is that earlier icons of Christ were designed to have two halves: an angry, judgmental half, and a merciful soft one. And, as I stared at this icon, I found that the noise just got louder and louder and louder until I could almost hear it with my ears because my mind was trying to receive a thought and it didn't really want to so it was just cranking the noise so I could continue alongside my doomed course. But, somehow, it got through.

If all I've seen is wrath there must be mercy somewhere. And I want to find it.

And then the noise stopped. Merciful sweetness, it just stopped. I stood in utter interior silence. I could relax. I could breathe. I could just exist. I was free. It wasn't a lack of noise, it was peace. And I let myself just be in it. I never wanted to leave it. Even an instant of this peace, of this silence, which was definitely not coming from me, which had nothing to do with me, was enough of a reason to live.


And then I heard it.

The smallest of whispers.

Is everything alright now?
 
Small. Still. Like a child whispering a secret into your ear. But inconceivably more powerful. And anyone who has had a child whisper into your ear knows that is the most powerful thing in the world. To have a little voice in your hear, telling you the most earnest, the most deathly serious of their secrets, or just anything at all, really, will change your life, regardless of what is said. I have two of my own. I know.

This whisper outstripped it. There was a power behind that whisper that could have unmade me in a moment. I trembled with fear to hear it, from the sheer power of it. A choice had been made to preserve me, even while pressing down the pain, even if only for a moment. I responded with a joy that I did not understand. And still don't. "Yes, yes it's OK. There is still hope."

A few years passed and I began to forget. That's no crime, I suppose, but it  did make life a lot harder. And then, one day, the album Nothing is Sound was released, and this song was on it:


In the coming years, as the shadows in my mind continued to scream as loudly as they could, I would find random spots where I could listen to this song. I could feel the Silence behind it, that presence that reminded me that all it was going to take was a bit more pushing. Just keep going. I would find mercy soon enough. Even if that meant just listening to the song and waiting it out.

Boy, the Silence's definition of soon and my definition of soon do not line up at all. But push I did. Somehow the woman who interceded for me in the above moment, in a moment of Silence herself, decided that I was marriageable material. I certainly didn't argue. I still try not to. And so we keep on. So far two children have followed. Silence sits behind their eyes, and I only hope I can help them keep it.

I didn't know it, but I had a hard weekend. The perennial conversation about embracing the chaos or the Silence was very strong in my heart. I was barely aware of it, of course.  Until this morning, that is, when I stepped out  to go to work. I didn't know the darkness in my heart.

Until I heard a small voice behind me.

"Daddy have good day at work!"

I turned. I'd heard that with my ears.

And he was just standing there, waving.

Well, trying to anyway. He's two, so it was more like his hand just bopping all over the place. But gosh he was pumping that hand hard. I stopped and waved back. He was very serious. No smile. I wonder if he knew what was in my heart. I sure didn't, not at the time. But the hand kept pumping. I stopped. He stopped. I waved. He pumped his hand back. I couldn't stop looking at him. So I backed up to the car, waving. He stayed at the door, pumping that hand in every direction he could think to put it.

And then I came to work. Something had just happened, but I'd no idea. And the above song had just been uploaded by Switchfoot.

I'm sitting here on the edge of tears.

Fortunately not all tears are evil.

Just a little further.