On the Surface of Things

"Having an artistic personality type, I tend to have big feelings. Because I work within a creative vocation, I get to explore them fairly regularly in my writing and performing. But even with that vocational permission, I live most of my days on the surface of things. Most of us don’t have much time in the margins to reflect on what we are feeling or how we are acting out of those feelings and values. Often it takes painful life-disruption before we stop and reflect on what’s beneath the surface of the life we have built. We live with patterns of behavior and relate to others without being awake to our real fears or woundedness." Sandra McCracken

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies."   Psalm 51:1

If you've been following my story over the years, this story is nothing new. You've heard all this before. But this story resides just below the surface and gets kicked up from time to time. So here it is again.

When I read these words of Sandra McCracken this morning, she took me back twenty five years. Beginning in August of 1990 within a nine month period  I experienced an unthinkable amount of personal loss and grief.  My best childhood friend killed himself. One of my best friends and his fiance were murdered.  Our neighbor's ten year old son accidentally hanged himself with his sister's jump rope. This kicked up the unresolved grief of the death of my little brother when he was eight days old and I was ten. A good friend's wife died with a brain tumor.    And then within a few weeks of each other, both of my grandmothers and my great aunt died. You would think that at some point I would have reached a saturation point, that my soul and psyche couldn't feel any more pain. But that was not the case. With each subsequent death, the pain grew deeper and harder to process. There is no darkness like emotional darkness.  I never tried to end my life, I just wanted my life to end.

The mother of my friend who was murdered invited me to a grief support group called Compassionate  Friends. We all just shared our stories of loss and pain. Since it was a group for bereaved parents, I always prefaced my remarks with "I have not earned the right to be here.  Your losses are so much greater than mine." The group always answered, "You are welcome here. Please share your story with us."

Looking back at that year with Compassionate Friends, I was right, I had no business being there. Losing a child is the ultimate loss and grief. No loss or combination of losses begins to approach it. But then, how do I  measure the value of saving my own life? My parents would have lost me.

 Sandra McCracken said, "Often it takes a painful life-disruption before we stop and reflect on what's beneath the surface of the life we have built...without being awake to our real fears or woundedness."  In 1990 it  took a "life-disruption" of epic proportions for me to deal with my brother's death. At his funeral, a well-meaning uncle asked me to stop crying. He told me that it would upset my mother.  I was ten years old. Who was I to question an adult? I stopped crying. I had never cried again. After a meeting, the director of Compassionate Friends told me,  "David, I think you need to consider that the loss of your brother is more significant to you than all of these deaths." I did consider it and within days I learned that she was right. Grief has a way of eventually catching up with you.  You either deal with the pain of grief or it will deal with you.

This morning it took no "life-disruption" to cause me "to delve beneath the surface." I only needed to read McCracken's  words and listen to her music.  

I publish these words with deep, deep appreciation for my friend who took me to Compassionate Friends.  Maybe it's too dramatic to say  "she saved my life", but not by very much. And as I sit here "in my right mind at the feet of Jesus" I feel profound gratitude for my wife, my son  and all the people who tried to help me.  And they did help me.

I,too, am of  "the artistic personality type" and I certainly "have big feelings."  There's nothing I can do about that.  What I can do is, regardless of the loved ones I have lost, to channel those feelings into the living people I'm surrounded with every day.  Living people get hurt.  Living people suffer. Living people often accumulate pain.  But living people are living. In Buddhism sentient beings are beings with consciousness. A sentient being knows that it is alive. "Sentience", in some contexts, is life itself(Wikipedia). Life is good. But it doesn't always feel that way.

 McCracken says, "I live most days on the surface of things." And that's a good thing. Just like when we swim, that's the only place we are able to live. There is a powerful scene in the 1980 movie Ordinary People, a movie that earned Timothy Hutton an Academy Award in his first leading role as Conrad Jarrett. Conrad, in  a life-or-death panic,  sought out his counselor in the middle of the night. Conrad had just learned of the suicide of his friend Karen. And his survival guilt had reached a breaking point. Regarding his brother's drowning in the sailboat accident, his counselor asked him, "What did you do that was so wrong?"  After a poignant pause, Conrad answered "I hung on." "Yes", he said, "You hung on."

Also in that scene Conrad's counselor told him, "Not all feelings feel good."  Thankfully, not all feelings feel bad.   Although there are very deep places below the surface, I don't live there. In spite of those  losses and so many since then,  I choose to  live on the surface of things. That's the only place  I can breathe.