In Jeremiah's Well

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I hate this time of year. I hate the cold. I hate the darkness. I hate the season. 

So you don't like winter.

........I don't like death. Trees die. Flowers die. Sunlight dies. Warmth dies. Everything is cold, dark, empty, and dead.

There's a new year.

Just a turned a page on the calendar, a tick of the hands on the clock. 

And underneath the frozen ground there's life. 

Anything underground is in a grave.

Come on now, you've had a couple of enjoyable weeks lately. 

Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. What has changed? Because it wasn't the weather. 

Why do people expect you to be cheerful and positive when you don't actually feel that way?

Maybe because your attitude defines your altitude?

Cliches? Really?

I invented them. ;)

A smiley? Seriously? But you didn't answer me.

Maybe because by doing so you can change how you feel. Like a smiley makes you smile.

That is very odd because it never works for me. I can push aside some things to get through a moment, but you can't hide from things. You can smile in the mirror, at the clerk behind the register. Do you know that serial killers are some of the most charming people? Virtually no one ever guesses they were a serial killer until they go totally berserk.

Ah ha.... so... uh...what do serial killers have to do with this?

I don't know. It occurred to me that those people are always smiling and cheerful. Everyone loves them. They can charm birds from trees and people from their homes. I bet they're some of the best singers in their churches if they go to church. And honestly, they probably do. Then they go out and do horrible things to people. 

Wow... o.k.

I'm supposed to smile and enter the world with pretty platitudes and cheer. Just like they do. Only I'm the one who is lying. Those crazy people are actually doing what they love. They're happy to cause pain and heartache and death. I experience pain and heartache and people expect me to dance a jig. I see others and my heart hurts for them. I never tell anyone to "cheer up" or "be thankful" or any of that because I know that pain. Those things only hurt when you're hurting. 

When you're depressed, other people are uncomfortable. 

So it isn't about me. It is about their comfort. If someone has a compound fracture of their leg and I say, "Hey, it isn't so bad. Just smile and think good thoughts. You'll feel much better!" That's going to help? 

Well,  no, they'd probably kill you. Look, do you have a point?

I'm not sure. This thing... this annual descent is difficult. And people don't get it. I tire of hearing the platitudes, smile, be thankful, whatever. I think people like that, who expect you to go dancing off into the day, have never stared into the darkness. They've never stood on the brink of a pit so deep that they couldn't see the bottom. They've never had to walk in the dark places. It forever changed those of us who have experienced them. And buckets of cheer, after you've been in those places, just don't happen for you as often. Good cheer, singing, dancing, or any of those things can 't obliterate the images the experience leaves in your mind. 

I do understand. But you keep going. You don't sit around and think about it.

Someone forgot to tell Jeremiah. Jeremiah is one of the few people in the Bible who I think understood people who've been through dark places. I've written about this before here. He had lived in dark places. I could have written Lamentations 3:1-20 . I notice he sort of blamed you.

I get that a lot. But we're good.

I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. 

He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.

He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.

He certainly understood depression. 

But then, in the middle of all of it, a thought came to his mind. He didn't smile in the mirror. He still felt bad.  He remembers the blackness. I had to look up the reference to be sure, but I recalled something about Jeremiah. (Jer. 38:6)

Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.

They dropped him by rope into a muddy hole underground. He was in a dark pit, and it was sucking him down. The guy was going to drown in muck. I've been in that hole! I've felt the slime and ooze of it creeping up around me. It is cold, wet, smelly, and darker than the backside of hell. There is no way out. You're stuck there. And there are no mirrors to smile into, no place to dance and no one will hear you shouting. You stare into darkness until it fills you up. 

But right there in his own private hell he remembered something. (verse 21-23)

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Well, he got excited about it, didn't he? (Lamentations 3:55-58)

I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.

He did, but he's still sitting in muck feeling cold, wet, and sick. I keep this chapter marked in my Bible with a bookmark. I have to read it when I am there. When it gets dark and cold and there's no comfort. I have to read it over and over. 

Why?

Because if I forget, I'll never get out. I'll never be able to shake off the slime and ooze and get warm. Sitting in that hole in the ground, you have to wonder if he could look up and see anything. I don't know. I suspect there were moments when he despaired completely. But even when he was overwhelmed, covered in mud and stink, and wrapped in darkness, even at the worst moment, he remembered you are faithful. And that one thing was a spark in the darkness. For me, this is the most profound statement in the whole Bible. 

Really?

Yeah, really. Over the last several months, that one phrase has stayed with me. When everything is dark and I can't hear anything else, I hear that.


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