"AN HONEST LOOK"
Saturday, January 24, 2009
By Rev. Travis Franklin
4:15 am.
I just can’t sleep. There are so many thoughts of too much buzzing in my head. Rest just won’t come. I toss and turn in bed restless and wide awake. I used to fight it. Now I just give in to its reality for me and I get up and write. The truth is this is one part of being depressed. So for this time in my life I choose to portray an honest look at what goes on in such a time. I choose to record for myself and maybe even some day for those who love me the truth about my life during this time of restlessness. My soul is still searching for peace and calm. What can I say? It has been two years since my divorce and I still find I am not completely healed. I am doing much better than I was but the work goes on. For whatever reason tonight I toss and I turn and my head can’t seem to dismiss the still present pain of being alone and of losing all that I once held so dear. It really isn’t about the loss of my wife anymore. I am over her. I have let her go long ago. I miss being married. I miss someone being there when I wake up and look next to me. I miss the companionship, the sharing, the intimacy, the familiarity that goes with living with someone day in and day out. It haunts me at times. I never know when it will find me or how it will dog me. But tonight is such a night. And so I write.
Getting it down, saying it, expressing it helps me for some reason. Maybe because I am willing to admit to myself that it is really a part of me still. I no longer fear it. It has become a part of me. I am still uneasy with it and I am not sure that I will ever get used to it. I hope not. I pray to God for it to leave my life but for now for whatever reason it is here and all I know to do is to face it. In such times I think of Jesus and stories of him in the gospel. If I have learned anything from him in life it is that you face what haunts you head on, be honest about its presence, admit that it is a part of your life, ask for God’s help and move through the best you can knowing and trusting that somehow in some way God will lead you through it. I think about him in the garden on the night he was betrayed. He faced it, he prayed desperately for direction, he trusted God to see him through it, and he got up and walked straight into the fray with courage and resolve. I draw strength and direction from such living. I pray for the courage to walk and to meet mine as well knowing and trusting that regardless of how it all may appear that I too will have my resurrection just over the next horizon. That I too will know the joy of overcoming that which haunts me in the darkness and loneliness of nights like this one. That I too will know the smell and sheer joy of victory over such darkness, fear, and depression.
In such times I want to be aware. I refuse to live numb. I refuse to give in to the daunting hopelessness that can strangle the life and meaning out of you. I suffer for a reason and therein lies the difference at least for me. I trust that what I experience at this time in my life will inform and empower my life in a way that I cannot fathom nor comprehend now. I want a record of it all. I want to read this in days yet to come and celebrate that it no longer has its hold on me but that I have chosen to move on to the promise and hope that God is leading me to even now. I want to read at a later time that in the midst of my own despair I chose to live with all that I had in this given moment. I want my children to know for the record that their father chose the high road at even the toughest time in his life. I want my children to understand and realize for themselves that when the hard and difficult times of the wilderness come, and they will come, that God is there and that God is still loving and leading. In our own gardens of Gethsemane’s we too can experience and know what Jesus learned on that night. He learned that somehow, in some way God is present and that God will give us what we need to face boldly whatever life has to bring to us.
Tonight my old friend has shown up again. As a thief in the night he has come to rob me of all I hold dear. Tonight, at least for tonight with God’s help, he can’t have me. I am already taken. I have been bought with a price. And tonight he will leave disappointed. I choose God. I choose meaning and purpose in my suffering. I choose God to be here with me in my loneliness. So with all the courage I can muster I say be gone and leave me alone. I am weary of the battle on this evening. My soul needs rest from the restlessness. I am going to bed. I am going to sleep. I am going to dream of that day when this evil depression no longer has its grip on me. Tonight I choose to live. Goodnight old adversary. I am going to bed and the freedom and rest my sleep will give to me. You can have me no longer at least for now!
I will see you on the road,
Travis