& Woe

“Christ In The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee” - Rembrandt

The end of 2019 gifted me with some of the worst and most brutal emotional pain I’ve ever felt.

My wife and I had a miscarriage.

There are so many opinions on miscarriages to which I’ll kindly leave for another time, but maybe try to fill out a bit of the misconception around the weight of one.

Statistics are a funny thing - helpful or utterly destructive depending on the source material. In baseball, they can rebuild you a team and win you a championship, and in health they have the power to cement despair with a resounding “wtf?” It’s easy to rely on stats to assume a cohesive and full understanding of a situation, though there are bold letter intangibles that are left out.

Watching someone you love fall headfirst into despair, unable to catch or carry them as they spill between your fingers while simultaneously losing something you know to be deeply important, though never actually experiencing the physicality of the thing, can’t at any extent be captured by a statistic. Further, I know what my sweet wife experienced was far deeper and more terrifying than what I witnessed, and that drives even more emotional pain as some might be able to attest.

So you see, the truest understanding of pain is reserved to the experience of the one who encounters it, and a stat on a website somewhere claiming to know the percentage of how often something happens has just about the same intelligent observation as a fart in the wind.

And there’s another funny thing called platitudes, and you tend to find them a lot in Christianity. One of our most encountered during this statistical moment in our marriage was “God has a plan.”

The hammer of pop-Christian-culture is this very true, yet weak approach at soothing a despair like driving a pin nail into drywall attempting to hold up a gold-framed masterpiece - works for some things, totally and obviously insufficient for others, dependent completely on the competency of the one wielding the hammer to know the difference.

Snarling aside, what I’m trying to get at is this: in America at least, assuming other developed and non-developed nations are similar, we hate suffering, so much so that we will do everything and anything we can to minimize the weight and shorten the length so we don’t feel the effects linger past a certain threshold - like throwing out an aspirin in the form of a truth out of context. Within the Christian community we have adopted this same reflex spiritually, and we are completely missing the fathoms of riches offered in the form of suffering because we’re too afraid to touch the icy waves lapping at our feet.

Remember, it’s through suffering that you and I are saved. Said another way, it’s through the brutal and excruciating mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical suffering of the last 3 days of a single man’s life that you and I have even the slightest ability to proclaim faith in something that gives, as an undeserved gift, eternal life, hope, love, and fulfillment. If Christ said “nah, I’m not quite into that business anymore,” you and I are fake news. Let it sink in.

You are saved through suffering.

Woe is a touching of that glory of salvation.

Horatio G. Spafford is the lyricist behind the hymn “It Is Well.” The story of that hymn is wrought with suffering to an extent which, God willing, we’ll never experience. He lost his business in the great fire of Chicago, lost his son to scarlet fever in the same time, and lost his 4 daughters directly after as they and their mom set sail across the Atlantic where they were supposed to find new life. Their ship collided with another in the open water killing more than 200 people, his wife survived. She sent a message back when she finally reached England, “Saved alone. What shall I do?” Horatio soon followed to meet her, and over the exact spot where the collision happened and his four daughters perished, he penned the verses that we sing today. “It is well with my soul.” (source)

I don’t want to claim any knowledge of how Horatio might have felt at the time, that’s far from my intent. I do know, however, how this hymn touches me over a 100 years later as the words escape my lips when I sing them. I do know the effect of this art on my emotional understanding of my faith, and how it challenges every single fiber of my reluctant heart to believe in the depths of good. And I do know, without the courage of Horatio, staring through the frigid reflection on the waters below of a lonely man wanting to hold his babies again, to remember the grasp of God’s warm hand is firm on the sufferer, I wouldn’t be able to refine so purely my own pilgrim’s journey today. The weight of those verses serve to anchor a weary soul in the comfort of Christ himself, and they come from (seemingly) the deepest and darkest moment one man had trialed.

Woe offers one of the richest soils for fruit to pour forth from the creating of the one who tends the garden. It’s from within woe where we find our deepest unmet needs, our darkest and scariest doubts, and the purest source of empathy to comfort those around us who have felt the same vicious grip of despair.

Is it all drama? Is there no laughing or joy? Absolutely not. But any artist worth their salt knows that it’s the manipulation of contrast in any given piece that gives it power and effectiveness, in the same way our joy finds it’s fullest meaning when it’s juxtaposed against a blackened background of groanings too deep for words. And it’s those who are willing to stand in that gap who will impact most effectively through their work anyone who happens upon it.

Anyone following Christ set on the winding path of creativity and independent pursuit has a decision to make then: will I build my tower to beat out the rest, or will I submit my expectations at the foot of the man who desires to instill his grace through the wildest forms of wonder, and the deepest realms of woe, to experience the treasures offered like a holiday at sea?

Through this project I insist on the latter. Through my work here I want to re-ignite the flame of wonder that Google has effectively snuffed out, and - just less than - force you to interact boldly with those groanings too deep for words. It’s there, friends, where we will begin to uncover purpose that tends to escape us with efficiency. It’s there we will learn the language of God so effective at reaching the hearts of those around us pining to be seen.

In essence, we will make better stuff the more we’re willing to dive into the unknown, and experience the undesired. And I personally want better Christian stuff.

It’s with my prayer and intention then to fight that good fight through Wonder & Woe. I will continue to get better and chase mastery of my talents only to reflect the goodness of the one I try to serve. Imperfect yet always pursuing perfection. And I’ll invite you to do the same.

Good on ya,
Sean