My friend John tells of a dry, arid time in his life. He felt like the verse from Psalm 63: “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.” He felt lifeless and bereft.
John began to pray for God’s help, asking for three things: “Dear God, (1) increase my faith, (2) deepen my trust, (3) expand my capacity for love.” He prayed ardently.
Almost immediately he was (1) laid off from his job, (2) deceived in a love relationship and (3) sued for a lot of money. He now says it was the answer to his prayer.
Unemployed, he found he had to walk a walk of increased faith, counting on God to get him through when he had few resources.
Deceived in love, he turned to God with deeper trust, for human intimacy had betrayed him so profoundly.
He says, if you ask God to expand your capacity for love, “God doesn’t send Beanie Babies” to cuddle, but really annoying people, some of whom will sue you.”
He was in the wilderness.
He went on unemployment with all of the indignities of registering with the state and going through mandatory retraining. He recognized the dissolving of his relationship was actually a blessing in disguise, freeing him from an unworthy entanglement in a way that left him thankful.
A couple of attorney friends intervened and helped John settle the lawsuit in a satisfactory way.
Without a job, he turned to volunteer work, organizing an Interdenominational Prayer for Peace. It went well. So well, in fact, the CEO of an international training and development corporation noticed John’s project and offered him a great job. That was more than 25 years ago, and today John is a happy guy.
He calls what happened to him a visitation of the Dark Angels. The Dark Angels visit us with trials and dift culties that seem tragic or overwhelming at the time, but if we hold on and persevere, they give us gifts we could have no other way.
Susan Simon was sexually molested by her father. Out of her journey, she and herhusband, Dr. Sidney Simon, have developed forgiveness workshops and written the finest book I know of about forgiveness. She claims one of the gifts many incest survivors know, a built-in “sixth sense” ability to read another person’s most subtle body language.
It was a survival skill in childhood. Now it makes her a more sensitive personand an eff ective helping professional.
When the Dark Angels visit, sometimes we have to hold on to them, maybe even desperately. Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Man Watching” seems to speak to this. I quote it in part:
“I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming…
What we choose to fi ght is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.”
She then speaks of those who wrestled with angels in the Old Testament, likeJacob, who held on all night, whose hip was put out of joint as he grappled for a blessing.
“Whoever was beaten by this Angel…
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.”
We are worthy to wrestle our Dark Angels. Some gifts we can be given no other way but through the dark struggle. Like Jacob, we are strong enough even to wrestle God.
Challenge God. Dare God to (1) increase your faith, (2) deepen your trust, (3) expand your capacity for love. May you continue to grow by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 13 on 03/10/2013