He Holds Me Together, Not Me

He healed me. He healed all of me, and I want to be just like Him.

I’d Love to Smoke Right Now…

It’s perfectly quiet outside, the rain just stopped but the lightning is still rolling over, and I’m completely alone right now in our little backyard. This would even be a good moment for a drink too. But I don’t do that any more really.

I quit smoking right after Lisa found out she oh so wanted to marry me, so almost seven years ago. And yet, I still have the lingering feelings of missing that familiar simple pleasure of a light blue American Spirit lightly crackling between my fingers as I inhaled intentionally. I miss that bright orange glow that would spark on the ground as I flicked the tip of the filter. I don’t miss the stench of the smoke staining my clothes and my teeth and my fingers, but I do sometimes have the fleeting nostalgia of those slow and meditative feelings. I miss the moment the act once filled.

Back then, years and a different life ago, I would find myself absolutely sleepless and filled with every kind of asinine and tempestuous thoughts. Every running thought back then seemed to hold within it some kind of lofty and romantic idillic weight of inspiration and possible creativity. Even my prayers had more to do with my own feelings of insight and the power to drum up holy thoughts. There was no real interest in some kind of Divine Communion, or really any interest in anyone else for that matter. I would think that the flash of a thought would be the kernel that would maybe become a book. Relationships weren’t really a driver, it was about me, my own comfort in my state of moody, and self-indulgent melancholy. So the cigarette was the perfect foil for my own little destructive comforts, and tonight feels like a looking back to that old way…

Tonight though, I had a salad that Lisa made with a fish sauce and toasted sesame oil vinaigrette. I ate a couple bites of my daughter’s remaining spaghetti, and I drank some sparkling water. After the girls went to bed, I made some plain yogurt with a little honey, kosher salt, and a small handful of raspberries. Right now as I’m writing, I’m eating a few salt and vinegar chips, but I’m planning on working out longer to make up for the chips at 11pm.

There used to be a young guy who was barely if at all holding it together…

He was a hot mess, and I remember so much of who he was. He’s not dead, but there is such a clear distinction between that chaos-laden romantic sitting on a pile of anxiety and trauma and the simple man I have become.

That’s not to say that young and driven John Mark didn’t have fun or have moments of Divine inspiration. I fully enjoyed the enjoyable moments. But I also held within me this turmoil of not knowing who I was supposed to become. Would I be like my dad was, or would I instead emulate the handful of men I had placed inside that vacuous void as temporary father figures?

(Luckily, George Henderson came along and helped me sort out a lot of this by actually becoming a father to me.)

Would I become the ideal of who I thought I wanted to be or would I become some unknown person that had nothing to do with my desires and aspirations? What if I just didn’t know who I was or what I would be about in my early twenties? Has that happened before? Has anyone else had a painful experience transitioning from childhood into mature adulthood? Like me? Who knows…

What if I just didn’t know who I was or what I would be about in my early twenties? Has that happened before? Has anyone else had a painful experience transitioning from childhood into mature adulthood? Like me? Who knows…

There was just so much pain in everything I handled within myself. When the ambition would quiet down for the night after a day of doing little if anything to actually help lift me out of poverty and depression, I would find myself swirling inside and around all the trauma and loss and grief and the truer frailty of myself. And my body just couldn’t take it.

It started with just taking a Benadryl to help fall asleep, and then more. Then I was smoking with friends, and then by myself in the dark while everyone else slept soundly. Then it turned to pills. And then chaotic behaviors of all kinds like late night shoplifting, sleeping with married women, and night after brutal night of ever-wearying sleeplessness.

I was relentless in my impoverished attempts of medicament and self soothing, only to come to it time and time again of absolute helplessness and suicidal ideations of all kinds of color and shape.

Years after the worst of it I was diagnosed with PTSD, generalized anxiety, and depression. The ICD-10 diagnoses would be: F41.1, F43.12, and F41.8 (I work in mental healthcare administration, btw).

The healing of it all came through therapy and the intentional and creative work of the very real and very present Spirit of the Living God.

When I came to Him without condition and without all the attempt to make Him work for me, He began the deep work of healing. Oh how patient He was to entertain me and all my many frenetic ideas and plans for myself! He knew. He knew that all of it would fall away and shrink into the ground behind me, but nevertheless He persisted in His devotion to my good.

Healing is an inherently Christian word that has with it all the conflict of years of individualized interpretations and agendas. In the first century, healing was tied to the physical. Blind eyes were opened, stillborn children were brought to life, ears that were cut off were gently placed back onto the wound and fully restored. Doctors had little to do with sickness, but more with the transitions of life and birth and death. The temples were filled with prayers and wealth and dutiful men and women giving everything they had for some kind of assurances for the health and life of themselves and their families.

**And then a man started walking on the water, feeding people, healing the sick, and saying He was the actual Son of God…**

This Man has my complete and undivided attention and affections. He has the permission to speak to me however and whenever He wants. He has within Him my unquestioned and irrevocable loyalty and fealty and deference. When I’m at my best, whatever He says that will I do. When I’m at my worst, I run to Him for forgiveness and mercy. He’s earned it with me.

Why? Because He healed me. He healed all of me, and I want to be just like Him.

When I was a kid and I was walking with my dad in the grass in the mornings, there would sometimes still be dew on the ground. His footsteps would be before me, and I with my short and stubby legs would stretch to match his stride, step-by-step.

Now, my stubby legs stretch to match the stride of the very real and altogether beautiful Son of God—because He’s earned it. He’s earned my devotion. Even when I forget it, He’s earned it.

Tonight, I can feel that little pull for something as innocuous as a cigarette, and suddenly I am thrust into a holy remembrance of just how far He has brought me. I’ve been carried through the waters into a land and a life promised to me long before I could want such a promise to be fulfilled.

“Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea.”
Exodus 15:21 ESV

I used to fight everyone. I used to be afraid of dying. I had terrors that I would be assaulted again and again. My body would simply give way to shaking and crying, and I would be trapped within my panic until I was able to catch my breath. Late at night was when I felt like I was my truest self, but it was also the loneliest and most treacherous. And now I find myself sitting at my desk with a little lamp, my wife helping my little girl fall back asleep on the couch, and I am surrounded by a peace that is as familiar to me as making coffee in the morning.