A Weight of Glory

We do everything we can to avoid it, deny it, fight it, but sooner or later we must stand before it face to face. Death. It's an ugly word, shaking us like a dog with a rag doll, shouting into our souls, "Life is meaningless, you fool!" The Bible says it is the last enemy to be destroyed. Even when it comes as blessed relief to the suffering, it remains our foe. And when it comes tragically, we are equally repulsed and drawn to it, curiously, like moths to the flame.

The media have been relentless in the coverage of Robin Williams' tragic death. Long-overdue attention is finally being given to the scourge of suicide that is now the second leading cause of death for young people. I wrote falteringly yesterday of my own battle with non-clinical depression, and have since read articles about it from people far more eloquent and informed than I.

I am grateful that as I entered my teenage years, I was accosted by Jesus Christ. I hadn't intended to become a Christian, but God had other plans and a better understanding of my needs than I. In an American Christian milieu that treats Christianity as a way to a better life usually measured by our cultural icons of success, we often treat depression as something to be conquered if one has enough faith, and if not, it becomes a badge of failure or even of sin. In failing to see it as consequence of the Fall that affects us all, those who suffer, suffer twice; once from the depression, and again from the guilt.

In God's mercy, I came to understand deep within me that God is real, that he is in control of my situation, no matter how bleak it seemed, and that life is a precious gift. God himself has been the light at the end of my tunnel. Without that light, I wonder how differently my life's trajectory might have been. Those who suffer not having this light bear an even greater burden, one that I don't wonder becomes too great for many to bear. In recent years, I've felt the weight slowly lift as I've discovered the power of gratitude, and as I've learned and experienced the magnitude of God's grace that for me has sent scurrying like rats all the little guilts that spring up from my regular failure and inability to do everything I know I should be doing. St. Paul calls this the inability of the Law to make us righteous. Grace trumps it all.

Actually, I'm not surprised at the magnitude of the problem outlined the suicide statistics I've seen. We live in a culture of death. From the violence that spews incessantly from Hollywood to the Genocide of the Innocents we've inflicted on the unborn, we as a society have long abandoned any notion of the sacredness of life. Ultimately, if I don't see another's life as sacred, why should mine be any different?

It is here that my faith in the Christ of the Christian religion offers me a Rock-solid foundation. That God valued our lives, my life, as worth the offering of his own, gives meaning and purpose that is greater than whatever pain I feel in my own heart. When the cloud descends as it often has done, in the blackness of it all there is also a glory. The Hebrews called it "Shekinah," the glory of the Presence of God. St. Paul goes so far as to describe it as a "weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17), something so strangely wonderful that it is almost too much to bear. I obviously can't say with any certainty, but I do wonder if some of those who succeed in taking their own lives haven't felt that weight and seen the glory beckoning to them.

Tonight, I am grateful for the glory. I am grateful for the faith I've been given. I am grateful that God didn't deliver me from depression, but through it. I am grateful for the woman sleeping silently beside me who for years bore with patience and grace the unexplainable silences, and loved me in spite of myself. A short while ago, I wrote her a song, the words of which speak my heart more than any I've ever penned:

She lay silently beside him in the stillness of the night,
Her breathing soft and steady in the dark.
In his mind he traced her features, no he didn't need the light
He knew them with the fingers of his heart

Oh how he loved her, how he loved her
He whispered, "Lord I love her, I love her"

Forty years before she stood beside him all aglow
Radiant with beauty rare and fine
Joy was overflowing, how little did he know
that she would grow more beautiful with time.

Oh how he loved her, how he loved her
He whispered, "Lord I love her, I love her"

No one else could ever know the secrets that they shared
The tenderness, caresses and the pain
Tears he couldn't kiss away, glances that said he cared
Times of joy and sorrow, grief and shame

Oh how he loved her, how he loved her
He whispered, "Lord I love her, I love her"

Nothing lay between them but the beating of her heart
He marveled at the softness of her skin
Amazed that she would love him as she had right from the start
He leaned in close and drank the sweetness in.

Oh how he loved her, how he loved her
He whispered, "Lord I love her, I love her"

Even truer today than when first written.