2020 Triptych pt.1 – Waiting on You to Shine

I found myself in the middle of a battlefield during the summer of 2020.

The reality is, though, my knees were already wobbly when I got there. I was punch-drunk and couldn’t fight at 100% strength, if I wanted to.

Less than a year before I had experienced the most traumatic event in my life, one that I’ve still not fully shaken. I saw things I hadn’t seen before, felt things, heard things. I was involved in things I never saw coming and didn’t ask for. I was wisely guided toward counseling to deal with those events. So, I met weekly with a counselor through the fall and winter of 2019 and 2020. We met weekly, right up until COVID put an end to that sort of thing.

So, again, mentally and psychologically, I wasn’t at full strength entering into that summer. And then, seemingly in an instant, the political uproar between conservatives and progressives that had fanned into an all-out firestorm leading into the 2020 election made its way into my little neck of the woods. And I was right in the middle of it.

A prayer service I put together in June 2020 for our university–while appreciated by many–was met with unfettered vitriol by many others. And the distain quickly moved beyond the prayer service itself and turned personal.

Johnson had “lost its way” and I was–at worst–a part of a subversive group pushing a not-so-secret agenda on campus, or–at best–a spineless fool, a puppet for political talking points I didn’t understand.

I was dangerous to some and dumb to others, even dead to a few.

I had people who I thought knew me and cared for me, people I thought were in my corner, all of sudden saying things about me to my face and behind my back that were categorically untrue. But I couldn’t convince them of that. Nor did I have the energy to even try.

I still can’t put into words exactly what I was feeling that summer. And I think that’s because it was something that can’t be put into words. The apostle Paul talks about creation “groaning.” That’s kind of what it felt like–a groaning in my spirit, something guttural, deep crying out.

The Book of Lamentations begins with the word Eikhah, which is an untranslatable word, like a groan, an inarticulate sound of sadness, complaint, protest. That is what I was feeling.

It is not an exaggeration to say I was experiencing depression and dealing with constant anxiety. And maybe the worst of it was knowing that some of my co-workers were being treated even worse than I was. So, I thought I couldn’t really talk about it with anyone because it felt like I was just whining in comparison to what they were experiencing.

The only thing that got me through was sharing with two of my best friends who happen to live in other parts of the country and who were going through the same thing I was. They too were caught in the political crosshairs. One lost his dream job because of it. Another was losing what once was an extremely close relationship with his dad. It seemed like blows were coming from every angle. We all felt beaten, broken, cracked.

There is a great quote from Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.”

I knew the first part of that quote was true. But during the summer of 2020, I began doubting the second part. I am cracked, no doubt. I am broken. But where was the light?

Credits

Words & Music: Bill Wolf