A Stream Flowing in a Field

So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.

~Wm. Carlos Williams

Bailing on a long relationship seldom happens suddenly, severe mental instabilities notwithstanding. They die very slow deaths more often than not. I sometimes hear stories where people are shocked when the leaver finally leaves, but I've usually chalked that up to their stubborn unwillingness to be honest with themselves and their shared past with the other.

In seeming contradiction, there's this thing called "ghosting." Because ghosting is now a thing (but really it's nothing new; it just takes a unique form in our digital dating culture), research is being conducted on it. Psychologists and relationship coaches tell us that ultimately it stems from fear—fear of conflict, which leads to avoidance of confrontation, of difficult conversations, and of hurting someone's feelings.

I get that. I really do. Because I hate conflict, and I'll do almost anything to not hurt someone's feelings. (On second thought, maybe I'll do almost anything to not feel the way I feel after I've hurt someone's feelings.)

But it should come as no surprise that all that avoidance actually increases anxiety and conflict, sometimes from the one being ghosted, and often from the lingering guilt that comes with taking the wrong kind of exit from a relationship. Such anxiety can end up ruling you. I know this. I spent most of my early-to-mid 30s suffering from it, because my life was one big ball of avoidance—particularly with my now ex-wife. I had tried open communication early in our marriage, but I'm sure I wasn't doing it right: I was impatient and unkind. At times I was condescending and angry and overbearing. Because I didn't get anywhere with that communication (no surprise, looking back), I shut down ("ghosted") and became avoidant (incommensurate withdrawal or slamming the door on someone is the same thing as ghosting, only perhaps more painful because it occurs in the midst of an actual long-term relationship). So our communication occurred only out of mounting frustration. Never was there resolution. I avoided confrontation (and so did my ex), and my anxiety grew, and depression crept in. And then one day, I woke up, and my marriage was over, kicking off years of mere cohabitation. That's when the seething bitterness made its home in my heart. And I walked the earth with furrowed brow and heaving, heavy shoulders, dragging around black clouds wherever I went.

Then came the day when those clouds parted. My marriage was still over, this time legally. Sadness set in, but almost immediately so did growth and awareness and vitality and friendship. And, yes, even love. Whether reciprocal or rebounded or unrequited, I realized I could actually feel something in my guts, something better than what I had been feeling for so long. Integral to that growth has been not avoiding conflict, not avoiding doing the hard thing. Caring for the surplus of meaning inherent in the symbol of the holy, the other, the I-Thou.

If only symbols were empty, irrelevant things that aren't inextricably bound to each of us, bringing to world new relations, binding each of us anew to the discreet places they reveal. If only. Then we could dash them against the rocks without consequence. The idols would quietly go into the twilight, and the marketplace would open the next morning without any sense of loss, of meaninglessness. Take heed: symbols gather, symbols world nothing into something. It is for this reason they are to be revered—broken only as a last resort. And yet, a demolished symbol gathers another kind of world, sometimes in Elysian fields, sometimes in the abyss.

Walk, then, with fear and trembling. Guard the symbol with your life. Protect but whisper those unsaid things that cannot as yet survive in this world on their own (like little birds). Become the place—the field-stream—of peace and respite for the weary.

It's like she ceased being Thou, fully human,
With her own despair and desires.
Now she's become a symbol,
A signature of abandonment, a seal of longing.
Toward the Emerald Isle, dizzy in lofty flight.
Ghosted away: This is the dust we carry.

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I'm Sorry for That

"The Myth of Sisyphus," by Nicci Bedson

I've been itching for a bit to put down in writing a little more after my initial post on divorce. Today I was inspired to do so when I read a post from a young evangelical who has walked a similar path. His stakes are no doubt higher (=greater courage)—not least with respect to keeping up appearances—so I figured I could at least shake some of my journaling out these past three years and see what sticks, without (I hope) succumbing to questionable motivations, as the aforementioned poster warns against when going public in this particular context. Being a feeler first, and a thinker second, I realize how distasteful this may be to whole swaths of what little readership I have. C'est la vie.

I was struck some time ago prior to his death a quote I'd heard Robin Williams say in World's Greatest Dad:

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone.

It succinctly summarized how I'd been feeling for so long, feelings that I'd previously found in the lyrical sentiment penned by Ben Folds back in the mid-90s:

Now that I've found someone,
I'm feeling more alone,
than I ever have before.
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly. . . .
For the moment we're alone.
She's alone, and I'm alone.
Now I know it.

I can handle being alone—defined among the single crowd in terms of the absence of a monogamous, marital relationship—in contrast to being lonely. That's a healthy place to be. But handling the feeling of neglect and abandonment—as if you don't exist—from someone you've covenanted to love, that's well-nigh unbearable. I can see how it leads one to consider whether or not to live now, in reality (whether it be suicide or simply checking out), as "the only really serious philosophical question," as Camus suggested.

If you're the praying type, then one perhaps valuable prayer during times like these would be that God empower you to be freed from the need you feel for that other in the face of unrequited love. This isn't to suggest a desire to lose the ability to love deeply, to trust recklessly; you just want to be freed from having that other be the object of that love and trust.

It's okay to let go.

Now, I don't think it's unhealthy to be wrapped-up in another person (i.e., co-dependent in a very specific sense), insofar as one's identity (in Christ, for the Christian) isn't swallowed up in the process. Loving God with all one's heart, soul, mind and strength is a matter of priority, not a matter of exclusivity. I'm reminded in this that there is a place for speaking of God's love and trust as "risky"—risky in the sense that whenever a person opens him- or herself up to love and trust another, he or she runs the risk of it being unrequited. In some small way (given the parts we've all played in our own relational implosions), then, each of us who has had our deep love and affection and reckless trust betrayed, unrequited or used, taste the hurt, sadness and remorse that the covenant God feels in the face of the countless betrayals he has experienced at the hands of those to whom he has given everything.

In line with my penchant for unoriginality, I'll leave these thoughts here by commending a particular way to let go. I understand very well that many times it doesn't go in such a way that allows for this kind of parting (mine did not). At any rate, here's Theodore's last letter to Catherine for your inspiration:

Dear _____,

I'm sitting here thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say.

I'm sorry for that.

I'll always love you because we grew up together. You helped make me who I am. I just wanted you to know that there will be a piece of you in me always, and I'm grateful for that.

Whatever someone you become, wherever you are in the world, I'm sending you love. You're my friend till the end.

Love,
_____

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Holy Grief

In the Holy Scriptures, we see the holiness of God everywhere assumed. We see how this holiness informs both his love and his wrath. No doubt, too, we will recognize that God isn’t more loving than holy, or more holy than loving, or, for that matter, more wrathful toward the ungodly than just, or more just than wrathful toward the ungodly, or more powerful than good, or more good than powerful, or more blessed than faithful, or, well, you get the picture. God is all God, all of the time. He lacks in nothing. He is the great I AM, the Lord of the covenant, and he is jealous of his lordship. He doesn’t take kindly to rulers who pretend they can rule apart from his authority (see John 19:10–11), nor does he like it when his children attempt to do the same. It grieves him.

To be sure, it is a holy grief. It is a just grief. But it is also a joyful grief—joyful, that is, because he knows his children will repent. Indeed, they will “follow him, for they know his voice” (John 10:4). Thus, God always grieves with the joy of his glorious plan of a glorious end in sight. Since we know that God is perfect (Matt. 5:48; see also Deut. 32:4; 2 Sam. 22:31; Isa. 25:1), we know that when he grieves he does so perfectly and without sin. In Scripture, we see that just as God does not shift this way and that, as a ship might with no anchor (see Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Heb. 13:8), so too does our sin and suffering grieve him (see Isa. 1:11–14; 59:15; Hos. 12:14; Eph. 4:30). But we must be careful in two ways at this point:

First, we must not assume that his grieving over sin and suffering is exactly like ours, for in our grief, we are prone to despair and the capricious changing of our minds about things we have resolved not to do.

Second, we must not think that there is no point of relation between our thoughts and emotions and God’s thoughts and emotions. We are, after all, made in his image.

Thomas Aquinas, while at the University of Paris, borrowed from the early church fathers a helpful way of speaking about this called the analogia entis, or the “analogy of being.” Part and parcel of this idea is that the relationship God and all men share allows for us, finite man, to speak about the infinite God. Aquinas went on to distinguish between three types or uses of language: univocal, equivocal, and analogical.

For example, if two parents are grieving the loss of their child, we would consider their grief to be univocal. They are identical. One simply cannot say who is grieving more. If we said, however, that “the parents are grieving,” and compared it to the exclamation, “good grief!” then we would see how the two uses of “grief” here do not share a similarity at all. They are equivocal, not related. Finally, if we said again, “the parent is grieving for his child,” and, “the child is grieving for her goldfish,” then clearly both are grieving, just not in the same way. They share something similar, but they are not identical. They are analogical. The same holds true for our grief and God’s. While they are in some sense similar, there exists one, major dissimilarity: his grief is perfect. And again, our only confidence that this is true is the fact that Scripture portrays a holy God who deeply cares for his children. Indeed, the very use of the words Father and children in Scripture would be meaningless if God were unable to care as a father does.

This, of course, cannot justify speaking about God in any way we feel. We are bound by Scripture. We cannot say, “we sin, therefore, God sins, just analogically, that is, just not in the same way.” No, the various authors of Scripture won’t allow that, for the unified testimony of their writings is that God is righteous and holy. Not a single one alludes to the possibility that evil is in God, or that he created or authored sin. While we can learn about God outside of Scripture (through our observations of the natural world), we must not go against Scripture. We must not attribute God with something that Scripture contradicts. And it would be a contradiction to deny God’s grief.

Clearly, God is portrayed throughout Scripture as grieving over certain affairs. We rejoice when we hear of the amazing, salvific grace of God call one sinner from death to life, as do the angels in God’s presence (Luke 15:10). This joy that fills the heavenly court is made possible because God is triune. The same goes for love. If God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have not always enjoyed an intimate union with each other, then how could he have created creatures that enjoy similar things? How could he have created creatures who mourn, righteously, over sin and suffering?

He created us this way because he intimately knows grief, as the father of any prodigal son would. When Jesus lamented over Jerusalem (Matt. 23:37), he did so as the Son of God. In this, he reflected his Father’s lament over Judah centuries before (Ezek. 18:30–32), and not only the Father’s, but the Spirit’s too (Isa. 63:10). Indeed, the triune God grieves over sin and its wages. He self-sacrificially condescended (a foremost attribute of God if ever there was one) to know man, and thus in knowing man, he freely invited the grief that such an imbalanced relationship would bring. Yet such kindness is not meant to keep us laden with guilt but with God’s forgiveness—through our repentance (Rom. 2:4).


{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 30.4 (March 2006): 43–44}

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