Making Safe the Shadowlands

I got the loveliest piece of affirmation lately- and in work of all places! A wonderful woman with whom I had an authentic conversation suggested jokingly that I should carry a "Warning You Are Entering a Safe Zone" sign. It left me thinking that when I am at my best, I create a safe space for others to be fully themselves, in hurt or in joy, in play or in anger. In authenticity. When it happens, I am humbled and privileged to share the space with them. My inner light is in this space, where others' inner lights are laid bare and nurtured.

Wayne Hutchinson laid bare his inner light, strength, insight and solidarity this week. What struck me is his reference to depression as a "companion". I know there is something in trying to accept some of our struggles so that we don't lose so much energy in denying them. However, I still see mental health challenges as more of a cross than a companion. The true companions (or angels) that I saw in his story were his niece, his mum and his GP:

As I walk downstairs, drying the tears on my cheeks, I encounter the most beautiful of smiles, worn by my beautiful two-year-old niece, whose face bears the look of someone without a care in the world, the way all kids should be.

I ask her for a hug and she lovingly obliges. This small hug from a little girl will get me through this day. That hug felt like the best one I’ve ever received. It’s just what I needed.

...

I called my Mother for help – she’d been in and out my room to me for days, trying to help, but I was too scared to even speak to her. Really f**king scared. 

Eventually I found my voice in her company. She listened to what I had to say and we both cried together. It was tough, so tough, but she promised she’d do all she could to help me. Mothers are great that way.

...

You talk, he [the GP] listens. You feel a level of relief in the face of  all that pain you’ve been through: the sleepless nights, the tears, the empty soul, the darkness that surrounds your world. 

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about a moment some years ago when I experienced the nurturing security of companionship at a time when I felt like I was falling apart. I was experiencing debilitating depression, had lost my confidence and sense of self and felt unable to face the world and unworthy to inflict myself upon it. I was not getting out of bed let alone leaving the house. A friend of mine called over and didn't tell me to look on the bright side or list all the things I had going for me or drag me out into a world I wasn't able to deal with. Instead, he got into the bed beside me, put an arm around me and joined me in my darkness. I was not alone.

Thank God, it is a while since I've been so low that that level of lethargy, fear of the world and letting down everyone in it (including myself) have been so unrelenting as to block out the light. Admittedly, I still have real panicked moments where I cry to God that I cannot bear to live my life with this as a persistent feature. In my more even moments, I see the blessing in how this enables me to sense others hurting, be compassionate and journey with them in solidarity, understanding my brother or sister's fear and darkness as my own. (We are one in Christ/humanity/whoever your God). It allows me to do, in my own way, as my cherished friend taught me- to get in under the covers and hold others in my heart, join them in their hurt and hold on until, God willing, the grip loosens just enough to fathom that no shadow can exist without light.

Somewhere in all of this I grew in faith. I came to know a Jesus who joins us in our suffering while promising ultimate triumph over the worst of it.

In the inner chambers of your heart, God steps past all your talent and hard work — all that you would think he values. He goes straight for the messy, broken places in you because it’s there that you can truly discover him. This is the way he frees your heart to love, to risk, to grab hold of life for the joy that’s there. — Paula Rienhart from Strong Women, Soft Hearts

I'll finish with a prayer from Michael Leunig's A Cartoonist Talks to God:

Abba Father,

We pray for the fragile ecology of the heart and the mind. The sense of meaning. So finely assembled and balanced and so easily overturned. The careful, ongoing construction of love. As painful and exhausting as the struggle for truth and as easily abandoned.

Hard-fought and won are the shifting sands of this sacred ground, this ecology. Easy to desecrate and difficult to defend, this vulnerable joy, this exposed faith, this precious order. This sanity.

We shall be careful. With others and with ourselves.

Amen