Answer
Oct 19, 2011
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?1
It was bad, dear readers, very bad. I spent last night in the lowest parts of the pit, and all day today the black dog gnawed at my leg, and only gnawed harder when I tried to kick his face in. That’ll teach me to boast about how well I’m doing, how fine I am, and how out I’ve got everything figured.2
Crying didn’t help, and neither did yelling. Talking to myself, talking to God; I didn’t have any answers, and neither did he. Came home, cried some more, tried not to punch anything. Finally settled down, after Compline, enough to be able to write something. I won’t even look at it today, just going to delete the whole thing. You think you know maudlin? Baby, you ain’t seen maudlin ’till you’ve seen me blog in the middle of a good old-fashioned funk.
A good night’s sleep didn’t clear it up, so tonight after the gym and a quick dinner, I got out the cigarettes and the kleenex and called Father T. I told him about my frustration, my anger, my depression. My feeling that I had failed, again, to be the man I wanted to be. How I don’t usually feel this bad but I never feel all that good, either; how feeling bad was a kind of relief, because at least I was feeling something, and maybe that something was closer to the truth.
Answer me, tell me I’m doing something wrong; tell me I feel this way because I’m living the wrong way. Tell me that everything is okay, and that I just can’t see it because I’m not wise enough, tell me that everything will be fine, and that I just can’t get there because I’m not strong enough. Tell me, tell me. I can take it.
That wasn’t what he told me.
| FT: | What you want is something real. We’re all wired for it. It’s just that your wires are pointing in the wrong direction. |
| SG: | Yes… |
| FT: | We’re all meant for love and for fulfillment. It’s the fulfillment that a man finds in marriage. |
| SG: | Yes… |
| FT: | Do you get what I’m saying? |
| SG: | Yes, yes, I get it. Sure. But what I don’t get is why I’m meant for something that I never get to have. |
| FT: | Yes. |
| SG: | … |
| FT: | I don’t have an answer. I wish I had an answer. There is no answer. |
That was the right answer.
Fr. T, if you had told me that I was wrong to feel how I feel, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me that God was good and the world was beautiful, I might have believed you, but I would have hung up.
Instead, you gave me the truth that so many people think is too hard for me and for those like me. You respected me and trusted me, as they do not. You told me that I am called to a kind of martyrdom. That the world is difficult, and that there is no answer, not here, to the question of man’s woundedness. That my SSA is not fair, any more than Down Syndrome is fair, or poverty is fair.
That those who cry “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, are lying. I am not okay, the world is not okay, none of us is okay. If you’ve never noticed it, then you’re not paying attention.
Being a secularist means believing that there is nothing wrong with the world or with us — or anyway, nothing that can’t be fixed by politics and technology. Thank God I’m a Christian. We don’t lie to ourselves; we know the world is broken, and all of us are broken with it. We know evil is real. And we know where to take it. We take it to the cross, we take it to the altar.
So I’m not okay, not today. But you’d be surprised how good I feel about it.
2 Here in the writing business we call that “parallelism.” Not to be confused with its close cousin, “poor sentence construction.”
An encouraging verse about our anguish turning from anguish to joy. For a while it’s like all we have is anguish, then God comes in and allows us to have joy. Then for a while we have joy and then anguish, like a roller coaster; but if we follow God our anguish will become joy and he will heal our hearts:
John 16:20+
I tell you the truth, (this is Jesus speaking) you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.
Anguish is meant to give birth to joy. We have hope in a God who desires to know us and desires for us to have joy in all circumstance, to be fully dependent on him, to love him will all our heart, to have our hope set in him!
Praying for you brother, and praying that your joy would be in God alone and not in your circumstances. We’re made for love and fulfillment in our relationship with God. Put your hope in God!
I’m not gay, but i’m catholic. This post of yours made me realize that I’m in the middle of this broken world too, we just don’t have the same broke thing. I’ve always understood that everyone has to endure their own hardships and I thought that some people being gay actually was just one of these “personal hardship” cases, but no, it’s something from your own nature, and everyone has this broken nature, in some aspect or the other. Made me feel more humble about what I’ve always thought of my person and to strive to do better on my own inner matters. I also have a broken nature, and God wants me to be more aware and take better care of it. Thank you!
I resonate with this my friend. I am glad you are a voice for those in the same spot. A close relative is SSA and has the same struggles and questions im sure as you do. Anyways. dont know exactly why im writing but just wanted to encourage you to keep writing. Thats all. You are inspiration.
Jb
God bless you, brother. I believe that God keeps those who struggle very close to His heart.
theres so many things i dont understand about this broken world. but knowing its broken and is not meant to be this way is a strange sort of comfort as i face each broken day. good post.
I admire your courage but disagree with your conclusions.
Have you ever considered that perhaps the real “lie” is simply the belief that SSA itself is “not okay?” That it’s a “lie” to conclude that somehow SSA is a call to “a kind of martyrdom” that is as unfair “as Down Syndrome or poverty?” That Saints Sergius and Bacchus were martyrs not b/c they were gay, but b/c they tried to live free from the chains of over peoples ideas? Have you considered that perhaps SSA is perfectly “okay” with God in every way, and that all those who feel “not okay” do so b/c they have been lead to believe they suffer from some horrible affliction that should be equated with Down Syndrome? Have you ever considered that perhaps the only thing wrong with being gay is the “belief” that there is something wrong with being gay? Have you considered that perhaps the only “lie” is believing “there is no answer” or that you were “meant for something you can never get to have?”
And if disagree, and say that none of that is a lie, then this surely is – “Being a secularist means believing that there is nothing wrong with the world or with us — or anyway, nothing that can’t be fixed by politics and technology.”
- Secularists certianly know there’s plenty wrong with the world. And plenty of it, perhaps most of it, can’t be fixed by politics or technology. In fact, a good example of what’s wrong with the world, that certianly can’t be fixed by politics or technology, is the “belief” that “secularists think there is nothing wrong with the world… that can’t be fixed by politics or technology.”
You may “Thank God” you’re a Christian, and you may not lie to yourself, but on that point, someone has certianly lied to you.
this is a wonderful post and I’m grateful I found it…brother, I feel you 100% and I’m not gay, just human, and catholic, and so grateful that God gives us these crosses to bear and each other…keep on keepin’ on…love you ♥