I Told You So

Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody in "The Mist," directed by Frank Darabont. 2007

Just finished reading Stephen King's novella, The Mist. It's a part of a larger collection of short stories called The Skeleton Crew. He definitely owns the horror genre, but I think a lot of that is because fills his stories and novels with real people. Beautiful, sweet, innocent, mean, boring and ugly. All kinds. And in The Mist there is an ugly character. Not necessarily physically ugly, but spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. Just ugly. Here name is Mrs. Carmody (see image above). Or Mother Carmody. She lives in this small town in Maine where The Mist takes place, and is known as the local religious, superstitious, nutty woman who runs a store of festooned with cobwebs, taxidermy and antiques. She always has voodo-esque cures for things. And she also sees demons and angels in doorknobs and broomsticks.

She's also quite charismatic. And despite her lunacy, her charisma is magnetic and pulls people to her, and some even follow her. When the mysterious and dangerous Mist rolls into town, it strands several people in the local grocery store. The main character, David, and his son, Billy, are two of those trapped people. And when things get really bad, Mrs. Carmody, also trapped in the store, feeds off the fear. She starts to chant, scream and accuse the others of bringing this abomination in on themselves. She says there is nothing but death lurking out the doors of the grocery store. And well, she is not really too far from the truth, but her solution? At its most annoying, it is to wail, scream, cry and at its worst, it involves offers an unwilling blood sacrifice to the malevolent Mist.

She reminds me a of one of Flannery O'Connor's grotesque characters. She is so insistent upon her rightness. And she is so insistent that you almost get this feeling she wants her doubters and detractors to die. She wants to gloat. She wants to say, "I told you so."

After this recent election, I have seen a lot of vitriol on Facebook, heard it in real life and have seen it reported in the news. CEOs are threatening to lay off people due to Obamacare. States are petitioning to secede from the Union. I can't believe I just typed that last sentence. A lot of people are screaming and cursing about the end of the world (again). They say, Obama will bring our country to its proverbial knees. Destroy our economy. Dismantle our military. And by the time we reach 2016, our barely two hundred year old country will be on the brink of utter ruin. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on speed, I guess.

And when these prophets and prophetesses of doom and gloom hear about CEOs laying people off or states wanting to secede from the Union there seems to be this collective impish squeal of delight. A self-righteous smugness about the decision they made. They cup their hands over their mouths in anticipation of that moment, even if it takes four years, to say, "I told you so."

But I wonder, have they thought about how this same disaster will effect people? The people possibly laid off from their jobs and lose their source of income and health care. The people who may lose their homes. The lives lost if, as they say, Obama dismantles our military and we are attacked again. The loss of life. The wrecked lives. And after all that, when we finally reach 2016, will these same people be waiting to say to someone out there who wants to hear, "I told you so"?

It's like the man on the street corner wearing two-sided sign and ringing bell yelling "The End is Near." Yet around him people go to work, take care of their families, and possibly even try to fix this broken world. But he can't hear anything over the ringing bell.

I don't think any of these people would ever admit they want to say "I told you so." No. In fact, overall I'm pretty sure they are good people. Except when they open their mouths. Or share their feelings on Facebook. Or write a two page jeremiad against the recently elected leader and the fresh hell that awaits all of us.

And frankly, I don't have a problem with people thinking that things are significantly worse in our country. And that we need to do better. Things are not great at all. But do I think a newly elected leader will make changes within the first week much less four years that will heal our nation and world? Do I sincerely believe this so much that I think if the other person is elected that I am willing to fight about it?  Would I be willing to preach the coming gloom and doom over the next term to my friends and families? Am I willing to lose friends and families over this matter? Am I willing to die for this belief in a political system and its rightness?

For me, the answer is a resounding: No.

I mean, really, what the hell are we talking about here: faith or politics? Lately, I think I have seen and heard more Christians evangelize about their politics than they ever did about their faith. And I was taught it was taboo to discuss religion, politics and sex among strangers.

Our nation is incredibly polarized right now. I don't think that's unfair to say. It is true we are mainly divided along our political views.  And in a strange way, that's fine. That's the beauty of this country. But I consider myself a part of a body as well. A body of Christ. It's made up of a lot of imperfect people. Beautiful, sweet, innocent, mean, boring and ugly. Lately it seems I've seen a lot of ugly, and I've seen it in myself. I've responded to harshly to people at times because of their "extreme" views. I spend time arguing over things that really don't matter. I've endangered friendships over what I perceive as extremism in others. In fact this blog post is in some ways a tirade against some extremism I've witnessed. Maybe I need to repent for this whole post.

I do believe in righteous indignation, though. Christ chastised the pharisees over their hypocrisy. He was bothered by how the poor, sick and widows were treated by the current religious community. He was deeply upset by the lack of faith by those who called themselves pious and devout.

Honestly, we don't need to sacrifice our unity on any alter in order to serve God and others. Christ's sacrifice has united us as one body. If the next four years are as you have predicted, please don't spend your time waiting with pursed lips to say, "I told you so."

And please feel free to keep your political opinions. No matter how extreme or moderate you think you are or aren't, you will always have a political opinion.

I'm pretty sure G.K. Chesterton understood how divisive political opinions can be. I think it's probably what inspired this quote:

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

Joy Comes with Mourning: Hope Floats Cont'd

I have been mulling over my post from last night. Actually, I started thinking more and more about it while I was in the shower this morning. I realized that since that day (yesterday) is done, I don't want to go back add anything to the post. I don't mind correcting mistakes or removing some small bits of information, but I think what I wanted to do required a new post. In fact, my last sentence, "Joy comes with the morning" is really what triggered my desire to follow up. 

Joy does not always seem like it comes with the morning. Or at least in my experience. And it's not the joy I saw illustrated on Sunday School felt boards. Back then joy always looked like some ancient middle-east man or woman dancing with a tambourine in a long gown. If that's joy, I'm pretty sure I didn't act that way all the time. Fortunately, I don't really think that's joy. Maybe  we should work harder at redefining what joy looks like. 

Then there is sadness. 

There was a time when I was going through serious depression, and I hated morning even more than I normally do. It reminded me that I had a whole day to endure. As some of you who have had depression know, getting out of bed is a herculean feat much less doing anything else. 

And when you are grieving the loss of someone, the morning seems to serve up Polaroid instant images in your face of this loss. There are a few seconds of amnesia, and you forget the loss, and then all of a sudden it floods back in. And it feels like it will suffocate you.

While I think the Psalms might have been speaking figuratively of joy arriving in the morning, it implies that joy does eventually arrive. And I do believe that. However, I should clarify that statement.

Happy and sad events in our lives do not equal each other out. You don't get a bout of sad events followed by a super jolt of happy events. This may have happened to some people, and I'm sure it's happened to me, but it never really feels like that. It's not an accurate way of looking at these natural reactions.

No, I think sometimes sad events happen one after another until a flotation device still won't keep you from being eaten alive by sharks. 

But I think this illustrates a distinction between sad and joyful events and a deeper sense of joy and sadness that follows us daily. There can be a life event that triggers a joyful response. And this response usually looks like happiness. I don't really consider happiness and joy on the same level, though. Happiness is fleeting. Joy lasts forever. 

Unless of course you have no joy. And then you are acquainted with despair. And that makes me sad. 

I prefer to call this type of sadness melancholy. It's a sadness for the darkness and despair within our world. It's a sadness for poverty, injustice, sickness and death. I feel intense sadness when I think of the many homicides here in Chicago. I also experienced quite a bit of sadness when reading about the event in Rwanda back in the 1990s. 

I don't think of sadness as really the antithesis of joy. Actually, I think that's more appropriately called despair. Despair is a monster. It's an abyss. Depression forces you to look into despair, and if you don't get help, I believe you can plunge into despair. 

I think most of the Psalms illustrate this balance between joy and sadness. In the beginning of a Psalm, David will usually begin praising God, then he may move into wailing about his enemies, but usually at the end he comes back around to praising God again. Some have said he might have been bi-polar. I don't know about that, but I do believe that Psalms show us that joy and sadness are not completely separate experiences. 

I have joy. I also have sadness. They both reside in my heart. That sounds a bit like a Sunday School song, doesn't it? Anyway.

The joy I experience seems to be more like the older term, mirth. I love that word, mirth. I also love the word melancholy. I believe God has blessed me with a sufficient amount of mirth and melancholy in all events in my life. This doesn't mean I don't get sad or even depressed, but during those dark times I still sense mirth. It's like a warm ember deep within my body and soul. It's like when you hold your breath and feel your heart beating. You can't always feel your heart beating, but if you get quiet and still yourself, you can feel it, sometimes even hear it.

My joy comes from God. Despite my failings, hypocrisy and utter selfishness, my relationship to Christ is my only reliable source of mirth through all things. Yes, I have the love and happiness from my marriage to my wife and family. My friends. My church group. But honestly, all of these people could disappear one day. I hope that day never comes, but it will be a true test of my joy in Christ. 

Yet in some ways, we have all started to lose those sources of happiness. We lose loved ones. We lose our health. We lose our jobs. We lose our sense of innocence. These are sad and tragic events. And at those times, that ember of hope may seem snuffed out. It may hard to feel its warmth. I know it's there. It's a knowing that is hard to explain. To some it sounds like cyclical logic. I will say, it's never really made much sense to me, but it's always seemed right. 

I really wanted to have a follow up to my original post because I felt like something was missing. I felt like my sincerity may have been lacking in parts. I am nothing if I'm not authentic about who I am and my struggles. I fear I may come off as knowing it all in this post. I don't. I really don't. This is me working things out. 

And I want to be clear that if it seems as if I am proselytizing, it's because I am just sharing who I am. My faith is intrinsically bound to my being. I don't really see my spiritual life as separate from my emotional and physical life. 

All I know is that despite the many times I've experienced such sadness and depression, somewhere inside me there was a deep sense of joy. There was mirth. And with confidence, I can say my joy comes with the mourning. 

Hope Floats

Within the past two years I have made a very strange realization. I think it's been something I probably should have noticed earlier, but I didn't. Maybe it's because I couldn't stand back and look at the events or my feelings. Or maybe I never experienced such emotional highs and lows so close together before. I don't know.

So here it is: good and bad things often happen at the same time. Or at least they overlap. And because good and bad things happen close together, I believe that joy is never too far from mourning.

For the past 15 years, I have not been good about expecting good things in my life. In fact, since my open-heart surgery in 2000, I have had this sorta negative positive view. By that I mean, I hoped for good things but always expected bad things to happen. I was grateful to be alive every day, but when I went to bed at night I was never really sure I would wake up. I hope I have a job tomorrow, but if I don't, this is how life is.

I never really expected things to last very long. Relationships, spiritual highs, great times, etc. I just thought at some point the wave I was riding on would crash. And I had better damn well appreciate it while I was on it.

There's a problem with that thinking. When you are focused on the end, you can't appreciate the present.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciated life. I loved my life. I remember attending my sister's wedding shortly after my surgery and being authentically happy. I didn't have this "woe is me for being the older brother and still not married." I mean, I was really celebrating her happiness like it was my happiness as well. I was filled with such amazing joy. I danced my butt off at the reception. I had a great time. The times I spent with family and friends were wonderful.

Yet at the end of the day there was still this awareness of my own end. That it would come some day. And more than likely, it would come soon. I've always been able to find support for this perspective in the Bible, too. Scripture talks about our lives being like a vapor. Ecclesiastes goes on and on talking about how our lives are so short and that worldly things are meaningless. In some ways I really thought I had a healthy perspective on my life. On my mortality.

And then just over a year ago my best friend, Joe,  died. Right in the middle of all these great new life changes. Barely a month after I married the love of my life. And over two months after I had moved to the Chicago area, got a great new job in the city and began a new era in my life. How could he?

And I didn't know how to feel about my life or...well...just how to feel. I was confused. To be fair, I had been going through a whole freight train of emotions since I transplanted myself near Chicago. As I've said before, I was a small town guy and then in a matter of two weeks I went from commuting through cornfields to taking a train to downtown Chicago to work at a company on the 21st floor of a high rise. I left an amazing church and close friends behind in Springfield, Illinois to live close to my fiancee. And then we get married a month later and there all those new life adjustments.

Then Joe dies. It was pretty much the final life-changing event for me in awhile. There were other things that happened, but this loss truly shook me up.

All of these life-altering events happened within 3-4 months. I was not sure how to deal with the changes. I mean, there is one side of me that said I needed to be thankful for my new wife, my new job, a new era of life with surprises. Then there is this other side that says all these changes have got to be rough on you, Jason. And on top of that you lose your best friend. It's understandable if your sad or angry or stressed out.

When I was in high school and college, I think I believed big life events happened like TV seasons. One major event per TV season. It seemed like happy and sad events in life didn't occur right next to each other. Maybe I don't remember things correctly (and this would not be the first time), but it seemed there were long periods of time in between each event.

Does this mean that later in my life I will look back on my wedding, my move and the death of Joe as completely separate events that seemed far apart? I don't know. One thing I'm pretty certain of is that regardless of how we remember things, it is a sweet grace that the good events seem to overlap with the bad in real time. It may be confusing at the time. It may even be overwhelming. But I think that hope is like a flotation device in the middle of shipwreck. I don't think we could handle the tragedy without a dash of hope. At least I don't know if I could.

I'm starting to believe that things can get better. In fact, I believe hope isn't just in the future, it's in the present. Even if things get worse, and they always do, they still get better. Joy and sadness overlap. And joy comes with the morning.

Girl, 16, fatally shot: 'She was my little baby'

Fighting back tears, he said he had taken Taylor shopping just days ago. “She was my little baby,” he said. “She was doing so good."Speaking by phone from Highland, Ind., the grandfather said he was having trouble finding words to describe his feelings."She’ll be very, very missed by everyone in the family,” he said.

Girl, 16, fatally shot: 'She was my little baby'

Please keep praying.

Severe Weather Alert

For most of my young adult life, I have had a somewhat unhealthy fear of tornadoes. Unlike Helen Hunt's character in the movie Twister, my traumatic tornado experience did not fuel a passion for tracking tornadoes. Just the opposite. I run from them. Drive from them. Hide from them. Sacrifice other people to them. But like her, I have obsessed over them, and it's taken me awhile to have peace in the storm, too.

Let me take you back to the day where it all begin. It was November 9, 1984. I was a young pup living in a small village in the south-central Illinois called Brownstown. It was a Friday. I had a haircut that afternoon after school, and it was so warm outside I rode my bike to the appointment.

On the way back, I remember really struggling to ride my bike in the strong winds. I was quite wobbly and had to stop a few times.

At the time I didn't know that two strong indicators for a strong storm or a tornado are unseasonably warm weather and strong winds.

I was supposed to go with the basketball team as their scorekeeper, but for some reason I didn't go.

So after I got back home, my parents went jogging. I think they stayed right in front of our house, just doing laps up and down the street. I think they were concerned about the weather. I remember mom having this sick look on her face.

We loaded up the car for a trip to Vandalia, a nearby town where we often went out to eat, did shopping, watched movies, etc. It was about twenty miles from Brownstown. We always took Route 40 until it met up with I-70. Towards the end of Route 40, it started raining hard. Dad could hardly see out the front window. We still took the on ramp and got on the interstate. We thought it was just another storm, I guess.

And then the hail started. I don't know if I had seen or heard hail before, but it seemed really new to me. It didn't necessarily sound like ice hitting the windshield. It sounded more like large bug splats smacking on our car windows. My mom started to get concerned. My dad nonchalantly said, "Hey kids, look at the hail." I don't really remember seeing the hail either, not like I did at other times. It was just this blinding barrage of water, almost like being in a car wash at 55 mph.

Then for some reason the hail and rain cleared up. It was still raining, but not as hard. It was as if the hail and rain were a thunderous beginning to a musical, and they had left the stage for the main act, the tornadoes. There were two of them. South-west of the interstate but seemingly far away. There was one thin and wiry funnel that hoped around the much larger sibling. I remember seeing electricity bursting around the edges.

Once again my dad told us to look at the tornadoes. As if they were wild life on a safari. And yet, they did seem far away. But my dad's lack of concern was offset by my mom's movement from worry to panic level one. She was urging my dad to drive faster.

And then it seemed like the rain and hail began again. And the cars in front of us slowed down. I remember seeing the back lights of cars. The cars seemed to be backing up, not speeding up.

And this is when we all shifted from mild panic to full blown hysteria. Mom told us to get in the floorboards of the car. She started praying the Lord's prayer over and over again. My sister was bawling. And I was praying every single prayer I knew as well as my own extemporaneous prayers. I couldn't really take my eyes off the sky in the direction of the tornadoes. My dad really couldn't either. I still think he thought it was an amusement park for weather.

And then we were at the exit ramp for Vandalia. The tornadoes had apparently crossed the interstate somewhere behind us and started heading east. As we drove into Vandalia, everything was sickeningly quiet. It's the kind of quiet I've always experienced during a storm, or right before one. And sometimes right after. This was because everyone in Vandalia was probably in their basement. The tornado siren was blaring over the town. We really had no idea what to do, so we drove to the police station. We were supposed to be taking shelter, but we really didn't know where to do that. So I guess the police station was the best idea.

The police let us stay downstairs in what might have been their older jail cells. There were a couple of other families there, including this one family who had a daughter about my age that was the worst kind of person you want to have in a crisis situation. She was full of peppy energy and excitement, and we were just concerned about people we knew in the path of the storms.

The sirens eventually stopped. The all clear was given, but there were still warnings and watches. We were told the tornadoes had headed towards are town, which was of course very disconcerting.  We began the drive back and after we exited the interstate to take Route 40 back into Brownstown, there were roadblocks set up. We were not allowed access from that direction. So we hopped back on the interstate and drove to a town on the other side of Brownstown, St. Elmo. This is where many of my relatives, including my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, et al., lived, where my mom and dad grew up, and where my mom taught 4th grade.

We quickly dropped by my Grandma's. The doors were unlocked and some of the lights on, but she wasn't home. This set us into a bit of a panic. We then headed towards Brownstown again. As we got closer, all we saw were flashing lights amid complete darkness. Well, darker than normal for a small town in Illinois. We came to a road block again. Somehow we proved we lived in the town but were advised to proceed with caution.

I think we all started to cry again because we knew our little town was hit by the tornadoes. At the time it was the world to me. It wasn't a speck on a map of Illinois. It was still full of adventure. I was not bored with it yet. We had started to drive towards my Aunt's (mom's youngest sister) house. I guess my Uncle had picked up my Grandma and took her over to Brownstown after the tornado. I'm not sure why.

At any rate, we never made it to the house. Their were still power lines, trees and damage on the roads. So we headed back to our house. I think we had called a neighbor already to ask about the damage to our house. So we kinda knew what to expect. We had some shingles off the roof and one of our long, spindling trees was knocked over as well. Other than that, we were pretty unscathed.

We ended up hanging out at a neighbor's house who had a basement until at least 11 PM. We found out later the elementary school was pretty damaged, gym ceiling lifted off and put back on, water everywhere, and the basketball team was safe as well. They were in the school, though, and I guess the coach herded them into the cafeteria. He had all the boys get underneath the cafeteria tables. They were the fold up kinds that were bolted to the walls. Pretty sturdy.

There were no deaths. There were a few minor cuts and bruises, though. A guy that lived in a trailer near my aunt's was asleep on his couch when it struck. The trailer was lifted up and wrapped around the tree. He was spilled out onto the lawn, I guess. My uncle said he showed up at their front door in his underwear, covered in blood, screaming and asking what the hell happened.

A day or so later we took car rides around to survey the damage. The civic center in town was completely destroyed. In fact, chunks of the civic center was thrown through the stain glass windows of the United Methodist Church next door. We attended that church and didn't go to church that Sunday. We heard they did have services, though.

We were finding displaced items all over town. Lawn ornaments in the wrong yards. Slivers of aluminum gutter and roofing stabbing trees and fence posts.

We went by flashlights and candlelight for 3-4 days, and I believe we were out of school for a week. That was pretty awesome.

And for pretty much the rest of the school year, I felt the need to ask my sixth grade teacher for reassurances that we weren't going to have any bad storms or tornadoes that day. I had to come up with creative ways of asking so as not to sound crazy. I'm pretty sure I still sounded crazy, though.

But ever since that day I have always had this inner barometer for severe storms or tornadoes. Unusually warm weather in winter or windy days usually make me feel uneasy. And when I've lived without basements, I've been known to stay at my work way past quitting if they have a basement. Some of my friends consider me a canary in the gold mine for them regarding bad weather.

I felt like I was changed quite a bit by that experience with those tornadoes. And yet, I can't fathom how life-altering it must have been for the people of Joplin, Missouri or even those now on the east coast. The Before and After pictures of Joplin and New York reveal the awesome and destructive power of nature. There's really no better way of saying it than just showing those pictures.

I don't live in fear of bad weather as much as I used to. I like to think I have a healthy respect for its power. And in some ways, it seems so arbitrary.

I am not going to claim that the storms are directed by a higher power. Quite frankly, when I hear of tornadoes jumping one house and hitting another, I just don't get that at all. It seems so random and heartless.

I believe in a loving God. While I do believe in God and His ability to tame the raging seas and storms, I believe that He speaks in a still small voice. Reminds me of one of my favorite verses from the Old Testament:

And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 

1 Kings 19:11-13 

I hope I can remember to listen for the voice the next time I'm seeking shelter from the storm.