I'm not alright

In the last six months or so, the internet (in its most unexpected application) has brought so many of my friends, once lost in the winds of change, time, and distance, back into my life. In some cases, there have been an awful lot of years and living that have past between us and this reunion. I have a tendency to love deeply and when I am involved in the life of the people I love, it is usually not just in passing...I am immersed in it, completely, as part of the family...until something happens. There may have been a job transfer, someone went away for school, something or anything happened that physically removed them from my sphere of being. The cycle repeats itself in my life and in theirs, and a new immersion takes place in both our lives that no longer includes us, together. At that point, sometimes all it takes is 1 or 2 unreturned phone calls on either side and the next thing you know, a decade has gone by. That does not mean I no longer loved them or they no longer loved me, but there is an optimism on my part that "I'll call that person when I have the time, or maybe I'll go out and visit next time I have some time off." When it came down to brass tacks, however, those days rarely came. I don't think this syndrome is unique to me, as it "takes two to tango" as it were, and I think it's a natural part of life for varying characters to come onto and depart from, our personal stage. I feel like lately, I have been more fortunate than most to have some incredible characters return for another appearance. We loved each other once, and we love each other still. Naturally, we are both filled with questions.

Inevitably, two questions arise. The first question is the seemingly harmless "How are you??!" and the second is usually "What have you been doing with yourself for the last X amount of years?" and these questions are what bring me back to the title of the post. There are many songs that come to mind that I hear almost daily and are virtually inescapable due to their popularity. There have been days I have been tempted to listen to music in a foreign language, but unfortunately my growing skill in Spanish has begun to rob me of that escape. They are songs I love and have always loved, but only began to truly understand by living the last ten years. These songs are things like Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown", Paul McCartney's "My Brave Face" and most recently "I'm Not Alright" by Sanctus Real which you can listen to for free and with lyrics here: (and please do)

http://www.jango.com/stations/72300810/tunein?proxy_id=39811684&song_id=129250

I have had terrible relationships with women. I have been divorced TWICE. I am incredibly broken. I consider myself to be faithful, enthusiastic, and generally a very happy person. Yet, below my seemingly unshakable exterior, I often wonder how long it will be before I do something that makes someone want to leave me behind and how easily I might be forgotten. I find myself constantly at odds with confidence and insecurity. I know I am not a perfect person and I have made mistake after mistake. I am left wondering how it is that I can love someone with my whole heart and still come up short at the end of the day. I obviously have something that encourages someone to love me, or at least think they do, but in my life I have found myself rejected in the most brutal and scarring ways. I believe marriage is a SACRAMENT. I believe you don't just marry a woman, but you marry into a family and I have been completely disowned by TWO. The second time around, there was a child involved as my ex-wife was a single mother when I met her. I knew what it was to be called "Dad" for almost 3 years and now have no relationship with a child I considered mine.

For years, I "fell off the grid"...that is, I distanced myself from the community I was so deeply a part of. I didn't want pity. I didn't want all the well meaning softened voices asking me so earnestly "How I was." Like an injured animal, I wanted to limp off to an unseen corner alone with my pain. Eventually, I would either emerge recovered or die alone. I simply did not have the energy, hope, or optimism that people tend to attribute to me. I did not feel worthy or capable of leading anything let alone be a participant. I still had my faith, intellectually...but I was left with serious questions. Did my second marriage make me an adulterer? I never got the first one annulled through the Church. I didn't get married in the Church the second time...that alone tells many of you how different I was. In honesty, the second marriage was born out of my need to feel loved and "save" this woman and child from their circumstances rather than any real love for her as she was. I loved who she could have been and ultimately who she did not want to be. She chose drugs, alcohol, and to leave. At that point, I didn't even have the softened voices to ask me how I was doing, as I had already disappeared from their radar. I had work, and thankfully, my Mom and Dad and one or two friends that pursued me long after I neglected to call them back. I have always been a private person with my marital issues. If things were bad...very few people, if any, ever knew. My public face was bright and shiny, and entirely plastic. I did not want to burden anyone with my problems or have to worry about me...so I did not give them to anyone, even God. At the core of me, I am not the kind of person that prefers to be alone...yet I had isolated myself away from just about everyone that ever loved me. And then...one day...I had enough. I don't know how else to explain it. Someone somewhere must have been praying for me because I just woke up and and asked myself "Where is everybody?" and the voice in my head asked very plainly "Where are you?"

As the song "Joy" by the Newsboys goes, I went back to the first love I ever knew. I went to Church. I went to Confession and let it all out. I laid it all out at a local parish on some unsuspecting priest who got not only the regular laundry list of sins but a litany of morbid thoughts, grief, and pain that would have cost me thousands of dollars in therapy. I later went to a priest I knew and trusted and asked about the annulment process and began it. I had to submit myself to the idea that the Church might say "no". I had to have faith that God had a plan for me and that I needed to trust that maybe this pain was necessary for a greater good. I went through my phone and called anyone I could still track down. I volunteered to help out with some old friends that were still in Youth Ministry and started to have some fun again. I was still the walking wounded. In many, many, ways I still am. I eventually found love that is real and a woman I could trust with my heart. I still think about past hurts and still feel them acutely. I do not expect them to ever fully go away, but they have...lessened. That is what leads me to the questions for this blog. Aren't we all walking wounded? We all have pain. Life is messy, complicated, and hard to get out of without getting anything on us.

In finding so many of you, I have discovered that I am not alone in my pain. Some of your stories have similar chapters and some have chapters I hope I never face. The world has brought us all tremendous pain in one way or another and if someone tells you it hasn't...they are lying, delusional, or at the very least...should be bracing for impact. I hold tightly to the fact that my personal pain has made me a better person. It is only through faith, time, and the love of my wife and good friends that I can say that to you. But honestly...how could I minister to someone going through divorce effectively before? How could I understand depression? Suicidal thoughts? Parenting issues? Loss and grief? How could I appreciate spiritual deliverance if I had no understanding of how much I need a Savior? I now have tools in my belt I did not have in my early twenties and a depth of compassion I could not have reached. I can recognize things in myself and others that would have gone unnoticed before. I am better capable to appreciate my wife, the value of laughter, and how much more people need to be loved than judged. It might sound incongruous, but I feel like I can love deeper than I used to. Some people have said I give better hugs and cry more at movies. I don't know about that, but I know I don't intend to lose you a second time, my friend. I feel like my personal crucifixions have made me better able to understand Christ and appreciate the sacrifice he made, the pain God the Father must have felt when he made his choice, and the redemption we have gained from his sacrifice...I do believe that in dying with him, I will rise with him.

I prayerfully ask you to consider the following questions: In your personal circumstance, in what ways are you different now than you were before and are any of them better? It may sound like an odd question, but we tend to focus on the way we are hurting, rather than the changes that hurt causes in us. Not all of them are negative or easy to see. Consider asking someone else who knows you and what you've been through. Do you have people you can talk to about what you are feeling and are you really talking about it or just superficially glossing over? Are you surrounding yourself with people you love or are you hiding yourself away? When was the last time you REALLY laughed and who do you know that helps that happen for you? Surround yourself with them.

I believe the good book when it says in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 – “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

There may be a day, and it may have already come, where what you have been through is the ONLY thing that can reach someone else.