It Wasn't the First Time I Had Died

Previously it had been about my own hopes & dreams, a recognition & accepting that my life was not my own but that I had been called by another to a purpose far more debased. Not that I couldn’t have chosen my own path—I most certainly was free to do so—but it wouldn’t have gone well.

No matter the choice I would make as I felt myself slipping away, coughing up blood, other forces would be directing my life. If I had chosen myself, my life would have been consumed with appetites useful to many but harmful to most. If I surrendered myself along with my hopes & dreams, I would be useful to few if any, my life even more wretched.

And so I chose to become more wretched & died to myself—three times over before the surrender was sufficiently complete.

That didn’t keep me from having hopes & dreams, especially of doing & becoming something of significance to others. Especially to one. I didn’t know who yet, but I wanted to have that kind of meaning to someone who meant that much to me.

As I have already disclosed, I have always been a romantic. For as long as I can remember I wondered how we would meet, imagined going for long walks, talking & playing together in prepubescent bliss.

I determined there were plenty of candidates, none of whom had found me, at least not for long. In college I went on a few dates with a few different women. One for the better part of an entire school year. But she couldn’t imagine being married to a preacher (her father was ordained in the United Church of Christ & had served a number of churches before becoming president of the college I was attending & from which she was taking a year off). With a couple of others I tried to fall in love & just couldn’t.

I did develop a lot of crushes, even a few who I later discovered had been trying to get my attention. There were a few problems that prevented any romantic inclinations we might have had with one another.

First, I was an undiagnosed autistic who did not naturally pick up social cues & so rarely knew when the cues were there. Second, when I had an inkling, I rarely trusted them.

I’ve already shared in too much detail my relationship with my brothers who were always popular & with whom I could never compete. By the time I was in college, those insecurities were pretty much set in stone. For the two years following as I traveled with three of them singing gospel music, that stone had been cast into the deepest part of the ocean with my feet firmly planted inside. (No, I never saw a megalodon while I was down there.)

A third problem was one of distance. Being on the road, I could write letters for a while, but eventually I would drop off. Long distance relationships are tough to begin with. For me they were impossible to sustain. With each passing day, accompanied by each passing failure to make or maintain a connection, my self-esteem would take a hit & sink a little lower.

When I had nothing left, no hope of finding anyone or them finding me, when all the gifts & graces I had ever imagined I owned had been stripped away, I would become all but catatonic. I might be out on a walk, moving around, but it would be without much thought for where I was, where I was going, or how I would ever get back.

This is what I saw.

In my mind’s eye, there would be an onion suspended before me, representing everything I was. One by one I would watch the layers peeling away, remembering each mistake & failure, until there was nothing left but a single white light gleaming before me.

This is who I really was. This is what was good, what others, what God could love. This was all that mattered.

I lost track of how many times over the course of the years I stood gazing at that small, glistening light. But the last time was during the fall, my first year of seminary in 1983.

I had actually become engaged to one of my pen pals from one of our concerts the year before. Then she broke it off. Then, my advances toward another were rebuffed & refused. One accepted my invitation to go out, but never showed. Another did exactly the same thing. It wasn’t long before…

…there I was, standing in the bathroom of the apartment I shared with another student, staring at my onion in the mirror, one layer at a time slowly peeling away.

I remember tears brimming in my eyes as I watched everything I thought might have mattered being stripped & expunged from my being. I don’t remember if any made it to my cheeks. But I do remember arriving at that little white light at the center, the one thing of beauty I could claim as my own.

I have no idea how long I stood there. No one else was around. No one needing the bathroom. No one wondering what I was doing. As far as I could tell, no one who cared.

But I remember the shotgun as it leveled over my right shoulder in my mind’s eye. I remember the finger that lay upon the trigger. I remember how it pulled back & blew my light away.

That was it. I had nothing left. The death not merely of hopes & dreams but the death of my very spirit, heart & soul.

Staring into the mirror at the empty shell that was all that remained, I remember thinking, “W. Paul Jones is going to love this.”

But that part of the story will have to wait.

"When the light shines through the darkness & there's nothing for it to reflect upon, it remains dark." -RJK