What if you are actually dying?

It’s beautiful, it’s necessary, and it’s exactly what you need. Even if it isn’t what you want.

I’ve been gone for a bit. Silent. I’m returning here, now. With some vulnerable words that frankly scare me a bit. Maybe they’ll scare you. But read to the end. Because the encouragement I’ve been given may be exactly what you need to hear as well.

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For nearly two weeks, I’ve been immersed in study guides and flash cards. It’s “finals” time for my first semester of seminary, and I had three of them at the same time.

So for the first time in over a year, I went silent for an extended period of time on this platform (four days straight, I know 🙄). That felt weird. Honestly, I hated it. I realized how much the Dead Sea metaphor is true. Have you heard of that one? It goes like this: The Dead Sea is so salty and can’t support life because water flows into it and doesn’t flow out. So as the water evaporates it leaves the salt. Loads of it.

I need water—words—flowing out of me to be alive and to sustain life. It’s who I was created to be.

But I knew I needed to step away for a bit. I needed to focus on studying, but I also needed to, in a way, take time to reset; to make sure I wasn’t making this—making you who read this—an idol.

So I paused. And slightly surprisingly, things got dark. Really dark. The salt started to build up and I felt dead. That salt buildup looked like this:

• My wife had a procedure to try and give her relief for the pain and issues she’s been experiencing for two years since a car accident dramatically changed her life. And we ended up in the emergency room after.

• My son’s battle with his own health issues has been anything but linear.

• I had someone close to me challenge me to be a better husband and dad. And there were aspects of it that were true.

• I’ve had several friends ignore my messages.

• I’ve had ideas (like this one) that have not panned out like I thought they would.

• And I look into the future and I see a lot of question marks:

What will happen with my upcoming book?
What happens when you’re done with seminary at the end of the year?
When will you start “contributing” to your family again?
What if everything flops?
What if no one resonates with your words or wants you?

On and on and on and on.

Not surprisingly, then, over the last two weeks the depression has come in waves. Waves. In fact, I wrote down words and phrases and ideas like this in my journal—words that are raw, real, and vulnerable:

The hope that sustains me is a cruel friend. It tells me it will get better, and yet it leads me to each new disappointment. It guides in my blindness, but not to relief.

And:

Death whispers relief. And only a faint echo of truth travels along the thick mist that envelops me: “Hold on, it will get better.”

I want to pause about that one to be clear about something: I am not suicidal. Last year,

Christina Lynn Wallace

wrote something profound about depression that is nuanced and powerful and captures the intricacies of our minds:

I’ve said this in previous essays, but there is a flavour of depression in which you are not at all suicidal: you simply wish you weren’t alive. This distinction is important. There is no ideation. I don’t dream of taking my life. I don’t assume that my loved ones would be better off if I wasn’t here. I simply don’t fear the idea of a fatal car accident like I should.

That’s been me at times over the last two weeks. If my high cholesterol got the best of me in my sleep, would that be so bad? Would going to sleep and waking up in the arms of Jesus, looking at his face and resting in his arms, be awful? Would I even realize what’s happened?

And then this:

I don’t fear this is my lowest. I fear what going lower looks like.

Finally:

God, are you working? Show me.
Do you care? Hold me.
Are you good? Inspire me.
Will you provide? Remind me.

Friend, that’s some real stuff. From someone who a lot of people mistakingly think “has it all together.” I don’t. Sometimes I’m barely hanging on, let alone keeping “it”—whatever “it” is—together.

But a wise man said thousands of years ago that it’s more powerful to boast in your weaknesses than it is your strengths. And that’s me. Radical vulnerability is what I call it. And it’s the only way I can live. It seems to resonate because I think most of us—when we’re honest with ourselves—spend more time trying to make sense of our struggles than our summits.

So what do we do with that? What did I do with all that? Well, I’ve brought it to God over the last two weeks. Honestly. And he’s been faithful to answer me very specifically. I think those answers are worth sharing with you because they could help you in your own struggles.

Here’s the summary: For every valley that I find myself in, I always—always—find comfort. Not a peak. I want to be clear about that. I’m saying that every time I find myself in a valley, the Lord is faithful to remind me that he is with me. Not that my “breakthrough” is right on the horizon. None of that “this setback is only a set up for a comeback” crap. Ugh. I can’t stand that stuff.

No, he’s faithful to remind me that he’s working. That there is a purpose—even if that purpose is “only” to draw me closer to him.

I want to share with you two things I feel the Holy Spirit put on my heart in light of that reminder. Because I think they may be helpful for you if you find yourself in a valley as well.

1. “Jon, what if you are dying? What if that’s what this is? What if I am killing who you were in preparation for who you will become? What if there are parts of you that need to die so that the best parts of you can really live?”

2. “Jon, you pray for the perfect opportunity, the perfect job. But if you think that job or that opportunity will feed your soul, it won’t. It can’t. Instead, you have to turn to me to feed your soul, and then you’ll find peace and contentment in whatever you do.”

I could write whole articles, whole books even, on those two points.

Friend, what if this feels like a death because it is one? And what if God is protecting you from the “perfect” opportunity because he wants to give you more of himself, which is actually better than anything you could imagine?

Think about that. I have been.

That brings me here. I mentioned the Dead Sea metaphor earlier. I want to end by returning to that idea. For my next seminary class, I had to read through The Confessions by St. Augustine. I had read parts of it as a philosophy major during my undergrad, but I had never read it cover to cover.

Until this week.

Near the end of book XIII, Augustine turns from pouring out his heart to encouraging his readers. Challenging them, really. And this challenge spoke to my soul in this season. Why? Because even when we’re in our valleys, we’re called to point others to God. Or maybe better yet, when we’re honest about our valleys we can’t help but declare our need—and reliance—on a savior. Mediate on these powerful words:

But you, who are a chosen race, weaklings in the ways of the world, you who have forsaken all that was yours and followed the Lord, you must go where he leads and abash the strong. Go where he leads, you the welcome messengers. Be lights shining in the firmament, so that the skies may proclaim his glory. Divide the light of those who are perfect, but are not yet as the angels, from the darkness of those who are infants in God's nursery but are not without hope. Shine over all the earth and let the day, radiant in the sunlight, utter the word of wisdom to the day: let the night, gleaming in the light of the moon, impart the word of knowledge to the night. The moon and the stars shine by night, but the night does not darken them, for it is they that give it light in so far as it is able to receive it. It is as though, when God said ‘Let there be luminaries in the vault of the sky,’ all at once a sound came from heaven, like that of a strong wind blowing, and then appeared to them what seemed to be tongues of fire, which parted and came to rest on each of them, and they became lights in the firmament of heaven, possessed of the word of life. Go, then, for you are fires burning with holiness and glory. Spread throughout the world. For you are the light of the world; you are not put away under a bushel measure, for Christ to whom you have been loyal has been raised to heaven and he bas raised you too on high. Spread throughout the world; let all men know the light.

“Go where he leads, you the welcome messengers.”

That may be—actually it will be—through valleys. And in those valleys you realize who you are, but more importantly who God is.

And maybe, just maybe, in the valleys he’s killing who you were in preparation for who you will become.

It’s beautiful, it’s necessary, and it’s exactly what you need. Even if it isn’t what you want.

Photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash