Therapy

So today Mandy and I had our regular therapy appointment. We’ve been going to grief therapy ever since we lost our second child to late-term still birth almost 2 years ago. I never really thought of myself as someone who would need to go to therapy, but to be honest, it has helped me profoundly.

Dar Williams has this song about therapy where she talks about how nice it is to sit down and talk about yourself for an hour.  I think her intention is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, but honestly, it is nice! As a pastor, I spend a lot of time thinking, talking, and praying about others. And I love it. It brings me a lot of life to help and serve others. And many times I find helping others very cathartic.

But sometimes it is nice to just sit down and talk about myself. Today for instance as we neared the end of the session, and she was asking some about me, I just began to talk about some stuff that I didn’t even know I was thinking. The fear of losing one of my three living children. The pain of watching my kids grow up and seeing that really much of parenting is letting go of them – over and over again. My mom’s illness, and handicap. The fact that everyone I dearly love, is getting older—and while “older” can be good in many ways, it also invites all sorts of negative possibilities. The sense that being an adult opens your eyes to much of the suffering and pain that you never knew was so prevalent.

My therapist’s comment was, “Wow. You sound a little depressed.”  She said it was totally understandable, and that I wasn’t actually depressed, but was just seeing the “dark side” of things right now. Now to be clear, this is not what I think about most of the time. It is just an underlying subtext to my normal happy and optimistic self.

The reality is the suffering I have endured in the past several years has changed me. Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus this way: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.” I feel to some extent I have become “familiar with suffering.” 

Now, in God, suffering is never an end in itself.  It is a road. A road that leads to glory through patience. And what gives you endurance on that road is hope, faith, and love. Really I mean that. It’s not just a cliche for me, it’s real. So even as a I share about the “dark side” of my thoughts, that maybe were never there before suffering so rudely and violently became part of my life story, my eyes are constantly pulled upward by the power of hope. 

There is hope and life in the little things of today. The beauty of creation. The joy of relationship. The kisses of my kids. The embrace of my wife. And all the other things I love in life. And there is also hope of tomorrow. Hope to enjoy all these things for as long as possible on earth, and then on into eternity. 

So I’m not depressed :) And the reality of the dark side does not preclude the light, but only serves to make the light that much more powerful in my life.