Recently I’ve been bombarded with thoughts about our desire to be known. From what I can tell, our one great need in life is to be known by others. Superficial relationships abound but, when it comes right down to it, with so much hurt in the world, what we most want is to have other people in our lives who know us. People who know what we need. What words to say. Or not. What makes us laugh. Or cry. People who know the good and bad in us. Even what our favorite color is. We all need to be known.
What follows is a story of the ultimate knowing. But, unfortunately the story doesn’t have a very pretty beginning. And there is no way to tell the story without starting with the ugly truth.
It goes like this.
One warm, sunny October morning, as I was nearing my 15th birthday, my father took his own life in the garage of our rented Michigan home. On the morning of his death, I had gone to school. Looking back, it is pretty obvious that my father had calculated a foolproof plan. He dropped me off at school and called my, then, 22-year old brother, Darrell, to tell him what he was going to do. In spite of my brother’s best efforts to get to my father in time, he couldn’t. My father followed through. My brother arrived only in time to find his father. Dead.
For many reasons, our family handled the tragedy of our father’s suicide badly. My siblings and I were all far too young to know how to deal with the situation in a healthy manner and our mother was ill equipped to deal with her own grief, let alone guide her children through the process. What followed was, simply, survival. We all did the best we could. Darrell became somewhat reclusive and turned inward. He retreated into a world quite different from what he had known growing up, but which felt safe. For years he was haunted by what he had experienced.
The years leading up to our father’s suicide had been tumultuous and difficult. Our father’s life, once full of promise, was being eroded by alcoholism and mounting, untreated, mental illness. He was tormented and, sadly, as children, my siblings and I watched his decent…helplessly. We were without means to lift him from the ever deepening hole into which he was falling.
At one point, when Darrell was about 16, he and my father visited our grandparents home in Oklahoma. Just the two of them made the trip. Our family vehicle had been repossessed and my father’s parents were graciously providing us with a car. They had gone to retrieve it.
While there, my father sat despondently in his parent’s living room; in tears. He leaned forward with his head hanging. His shoulders were hunched and in his despair he didn’t even wipe away the tears. He sat there as a teardrop hovered at the end of his nose, as though afraid to fall.
My brother watched this scene playing out and, as a teenager, after years of watching our father coming apart, he felt disgusted by my father’s pathetic demeanor and utter hopelessness. Why couldn’t he at least wipe the tear off his nose?
Time seemed to erase my brother’s memory of the tragic scene. Or maybe it was just that far more tragic memories replaced that one. Regardless, he didn’t think of it again.
Many years later, after my father’s suicide, as Darrell was coming to terms with what had happened, he heard the voice of Jesus calling him into a relationship. Part of that process included a silent retreat. One afternoon during this period of retreat, as my brother wrestled with Christ to release his own demons, it started to rain. Emotionally fatigued from the work he was doing, Darrell went for a walk on the grounds of the retreat center just as the cloudburst ended.
As he walked the path of the retreat center he came upon a bronze sculpture of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus leaned forward with his head hanging. His shoulders were hunched and in his despair, Jesus just sat there as a raindrop hovered at the end of his nose, as though afraid to fall.
Arrested by the sight of Jesus in the exact same posture he had seen our father in years ago, Darrell was immediately transported back to that day when he saw our father crying in his parent’s living room.
There was Christ. There was our father. There was the reality that we have the capacity to see Christ in everyone. Even the hurting, despondent, despairing alcoholic we called Daddy.
Jesus met my brother that day and made Himself known. Christ knew what Darrell needed, and Darrell was known. And, because he knew and was known by Christ, Darrell was able to see Christ in our father, even long after his death.
In much the same way, when we know and are known by Jesus, we have the capacity to see Christ in others. In our spouses. And our friends. And our children. In annoying co-workers. And grouchy neighbors. When we see Christ in others how can we help but be drawn to know them?
A divine cycle of knowing.
No comments:
Post a Comment