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COMING
HOME TO A PLACE CALLED HOPE
©
December, 2004 by Jim Robinson
This is a time of great joy in my family. The season brings
images of childhood, laughter, expectation…a sense of
belonging, of being connected. I have my own family now—a
wife, two children. Heck, I’ve even got a little dog.
And as Christmas approaches I can’t help marveling at
all the miraculous changes in my life over the last decade-and-a-half
or so. God has truly restored my life. He has given me hope.
But this was not always so. Once, in a place and time that
now seems near enough to touch and yet just beyond my reach,
finding myself caught between the dreams of a boy and the
desires of a man, I ran away from Home. I became very lost,
lonely…very afraid. I walked through that part of my
life barely half alive, in a place only half real. It is a
time mostly forgotten now. But there are moments when this
past reality comes back at me with unexpected force, startling
me, threatening my joy.
This is why I shuddered recently, as I read in the newspaper
about a "cyber suicide pact" in Japan—an unofficial
"death chatroom," where those wanting to kill themselves
offered one another encouragement and support to do so…a
sort of death- wish fellowship. And only a few days before,
I’d seen other reports showing a statistical rise in
suicides as the holidays approach. As I read, I remembered,
and I felt cold. I knew these people. I could feel their deep
longing for something, for someone, for connection, for a
filling of an empty place within their hearts and souls. Every
time I see such a story, I pause, and remember.
Suicide has long been a part of not only my memory, but of
who I am, and perhaps who I will always be. After years of
struggling with bipolar disease and drug addiction, my mother
succumbed to that stranger who had always stalked her. In
my memoir, Prodigal Song, I painfully remembered:
…so much of it I simply can’t recall. There’s
nothing left but flashes of memory, mercifully unclear. And
yet some of the images that sneak through are too dark and
sordid to tell, without giving evil more sensational coverage
than it deserves…
But I remember clearly the day, there in my empty apartment—the
phone ringing, my heart pounding, and a few moments later
numbly pulling down my suitcase from the closet shelf. Twenty-eight
years old, long-hidden from the responsibilities of my far
away family, wrapped so tightly around myself that I could
often fool that self into thinking there was no real tragedy
playing out all those thousands of miles away…
After one earlier attempt, this time she had succeeded. After
being dead in her spirit for so long, after divorce and being
left lonely and bitter and with no one close to minister to
her, my mother had finally found a way, finally taken enough
pills and washed them down with enough booze, though the doctors
said her heart was still barely beating. She was almost done
dying, now, broken into too many pieces, and though I had
been trying to hide from her, and from what she had become
and what I had become and what my family had become, suddenly
the selfish insulation around me crumbled, just for a moment,
and reality crashed down…
Though I had been steadily declining into my own pit of alcoholism
and drug addiction for many years, losing my mother catapulted
me into a deeper despair. I had been killing myself for some
time. Now I sought a quicker release.
A few days later—though I’m not really sure how
many days had started or ended my then—while lying on
a nearly deserted beach a few miles from the coastal town
of Brindisi, Italy, I decided to kill myself. It wasn’t
some plotted, melodramatic moment; it came almost as an afterthought,
something I had meant to do for the longest time but had somehow
never quite gotten around to. I was so tired, so profoundly
weary, that the thought of endless sleep brought with it a
sort of resigned peace. Every indulgence had failed me. I
felt finished. And so I stood up, almost casually, and walked
into the green sea…
My attempt to take my own life failed. But looking back now,
watching from a new vantage point as that strange fellow strolls
into the surf, I am amazed at how calm he looks, how resolved.
And as I read articles about suicide, and all the psychological
commentary and second-hand observations from the experts,
I can’t help relating more to the ones who are hurting
rather than my colleagues in the counseling profession. My
heart resonates with their hurt. I understand, somehow, this
most inexplicable of things. I wish I did not. But I do.
Sometimes, even now, I find myself lost again, with a sense
of being far from Home. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn
to see someone menacing and strangely familiar, with an unshaven
face full of fear. He will whisper my name. And there are
days when I actually pause to listen, mesmerized, suddenly
oblivious to the miracle of new life all around me, heavy-lidded
and high on the fumes of his breath. I will subtly and unknowingly
wander away with him, forgetting, seeking completion in the
false gods of fear and shame.
And then. Then I will shudder at how empty they leave me.
And I will thirst again for the only true wine, the Healer
of my heart, Lover of my soul. Turning back to Him who waits,
whose arms are always open. And His love once more humbles
and shatters me, as I fall into His embrace. Again and again…one
day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time…I come home
to a place called Hope.
There is no simple solution to the issues of depression, mental
illness, or addiction; to pass along a cure on the shoulders
of spiritual platitudes would be both simplistic and cruel.
Telling someone in this condition to simply pull themselves
together and get back to living is like you or I commanding
Lazarus to come out of the tomb. For many, the forest has
become too dense, the light gone, the way lost. Unless you
have been bound to darkness, it is difficult to understand.
But Jesus does. And Jesus can. He can call us
out, and unwrap the burial clothes. "Come to Me,"
He says softly, "all who are weary and heavy-laden, and
I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). And the rest He
offers is the kind only those belonging to the fellowship
of the brokenhearted can fully appreciate…those of us
still one life-changing moment away with the sweet sound of
His name poised on the tip of our tongues, caught on our breaths.
We, all of us, even as we deny Him and curse Him and turn
from Him cannot for long deny the very human truth that we
so desperately need Him. "Take my yoke upon you,
and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and
you shall find rest for your souls."
And so my prayer for all the lost and hurting is this: Come
Home. Turn and head back on the road to the Savior, the One
who loves you. Because I have been where you are going, and
I have tasted the cold emptiness of life lived alone. But
Christ Jesus offers to all a warm fire, and a place to rest
our weary heads.
Life.
Love. Hope.
Amen.
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