REBUILDING BROKEN
“When you’re on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey [itself].”
~ Karlfried Graf Durckheim
Acknowledgements
To the Western Meadowlark, a specimen that does not breed well with others, feeds in a flock, and devours the seeds of new life. Warble, Neglecta, warble away!
GROUND ZERO
Chapter 0
Raw carnage and reality
A few years before the publishing of this book, I held a knife to my throat. It’s cold, serrated edge pressed firmly against the artery in the left side of my neck. The life I had been building for close to ten years had been reduced to a wasteland of burning embers wrought with jealousy, lies, and a lack of compassion. I was but a shell of my former self, standing amongst the raw carnage my soul had endured for so long. But how did I get there? Surely it wasn’t always so bad…
Raw carnage is the outcome of ignorance. Whether on a personal, individual level, or applied to the societal, global blanket under which humanity continues to fail.
For some, raw carnage is simple. It’s a failed class, a crush that dumps you unexpectedly, or waking up to find the family pet lifeless. It’s a rainstorm that dampens a week or a month. It’s a snowfall that makes things cold for awhile. But the storm will pass and the snow will melt, leaving rainbows and bringing new life in their wake.
For others, raw carnage is something a bit more complex. It’s having your child murdered. It’s receiving a phone call telling you that your significant other has been involved in an accident in which they will never be coming back. It’s a paralyzing hit in football, a tornado, a school shooting, a hurricane, or two towers of black smoke in the middle of a booming metropolis. For others, raw carnage is something which completely shapes who they are and who they will become. For better or worse, raw carnage is Ground Zero.
For myself, the realization that I stood at my Ground Zero came when my ex-fiancé confessed that she had been involved in several other serious multi-month affairs through the course of our nine-plus year relationship. Such sobering news brought deterioration and plague to the world I had built to be solid and stable. Everything I had thought I knew – everything I had thought I felt – crumbled around me and fell in an instant amongst pillars of emotional flame.
Although spirituality had no role in her life, my former fiancé had claimed to have been touched by God on that fateful evening. The Lord allegedly informed her that she was supposed to have many different lovers and that I was supposed to become her business partner and fund her elaborate restaurant one day.
Such words burned and her actions left deep wounds which would only ever heal into ugly scars should I choose to continue in the world of the living.
A pastor and mentor of mine once told me that oftentimes our journey on this Earth comes down to one or two life-altering crossroads, and it’s the choices that we make during these moments that will come to define who we are supposed to be for the rest of our lives.
When we come to our Ground Zero, do we choose to lie down in despair and live out our existence amongst the rubble of yesteryear? Or do we look to clean up and rebuild something entirely new?
In his brilliant book and television interview series titled The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell claims that ‘one can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as a contrary to life but as an aspect of life.’ (PoM; 188)
I lowered the knife from my throat, realizing the toll, the disease that carnage had played over time. I realized the role of my own ignorance and more importantly, I realized the death of a relationship that had, in truth, been decayed and rotten for well over the majority of its duration. I had come to the realization that I was at a life-altering crossroad.
The events that followed would in fact solidify my standing at Ground Zero – something that I had been turning away from time and time again despite what everyone around me had been witnessing and telling me for years.
My ex-fiancé began to cry and confess how badly she felt that she had ruined my life and how terrible of a person she was for doing the things that she had. Her emotions began to escalate, leading her to the point where she didn’t believe she deserved to live anymore, followed by a plea to take her life with the knife in my hand if I wasn’t going to take my own.
Of course nobody needed to lose their life and after conveying this to her and suggesting that I go to my father’s for the night, she began screaming about how she was going to kill herself if I wouldn’t do it for her. I asked her to calm down and we could figure out a plan moving forward with how the separation should go. She then got up and said she was going to take her own life and there was nothing I could do to stop it. She began to run, and instinctually, I got in her way and she began hitting me. I physically restrained her until she finally calmed down. Police were called and after a review of the situation, and despite her wishes, I was arrested and charged with domestic violence for ‘using physical force to impede her progress’.
I was handcuffed, driven to the jail, strip-searched, and put into a cell with a confessed first-degree murderer in transit and a child molester. I had never been arrested in my life and so many people had always looked up to me. I was a loyal, trustworthy, loving friend, brother, uncle, son, teacher, and role model. What would everybody think when they found out that I was arrested? Would I ever find another job as a teacher again? Who would turn their back on me, and who would still be there for me when I got out of jail? My long-term relationship, my image, my spirit, my job, my life were all in ruin. I may have been in denial for years, but laying there afraid to fall asleep that summer night in jail, I could no longer deny my own Ground Zero that had been festering and rotting on its own for so many years.
In Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh, he writes and cites: ‘“One disease, long life; no disease, short life.” In other words, those who know what’s wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weaknesses.’ (ToP; 48) We, as people, live most of our lives in denial and ignorance, letting small tensions and unpleasant decay transform into the kind of raw carnage that eventually destroys us. Hoff continues to say that ‘the wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.’ (ToP; 43) Many of us don’t know where to draw the line in the sand versus turning the other cheek when it comes to our own happiness and our own standards and expectations in life.
The unfortunate reality is that most – if not all – of us will have to experience this concept of Ground Zero at some point in our lives to become “whole”. No matter how you were raised or where you grew up, every single one of us experiences being broken and fractured to the very core of who we are as human beings. But in order to avoid being broken over and over again, we need to stop living in ignorance. We have to be able to realize and accept our own Ground Zero before we can begin to rebuild our own broken.
Chapter 1
The Angel of Death
‘There is a Muslim saying about the Angel of Death: “When the Angel of Death approaches, he is terrible. When he reaches you, it is bliss.”’ (PoM; 279)
Perhaps the Angel of Death finally caught up to me as I laid on my hard, pillowless cot in the dreary city jail. As I was being booked, a city official notified me that a restraining order would be put in place and I would not be allowed to go back to the life I once had without breaking the law. It was over. Many figurative deaths took place that night, and it was terrifying at first, but oddly enough, when the whirlwind of destruction settled down and my cards had been dealt, I breathed in a sigh of relief and put myself at peace. As the Angel of Death’s hand rest on my shoulder, I noticed that a previous prisoner had etched the following in the top bunk bed above me: ‘This is not the end.’
In another one of Joseph Campbell’s magnificent pieces of work, he challenges his audience by asking: ‘If [you] were confronted with a situation of total disaster, if everything [you] loved and thought [you] lived for were devastated, what would [you] live for?’ (PtB; 88) Campbell goes on to say: ‘I’ve known religious people who have had such experiences. They would say, “It is God’s will.” For them, faith would work. Now, what do you have in your life that would play this role for you? What is the great thing for which you would sacrifice your life? What makes you do what you do; what is the call of your life to you?’ (PtB; 88)
It is in our moments of brokenness that we must decide which shattered pieces to hang on to and which pieces shall forever remain fragmented. This is a difficult process for people when they are in such a low and vulnerable state. They usually become quite impressionable and desperate to escape the Angel of Death’s grasp however they can. Oftentimes, they begin rebuilding something with the wrong pieces, creating a life destined to be broken again and again in the future.
Not long ago, I had a friend who was living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. He was a kindhearted soul who loved to talk and talk. As a matter-of-fact, let’s just call him ‘Mighty Mouth’ for this reason.
Living with him in the bayou were two alcoholic drug-dealing friends. When the storm hit, Mighty Mouth’s house and possessions were destroyed. One of his two friends went missing and the other remained attached like an old, stench-filled barnacle.
From there, Mighty Mouth moved to Colorado, following an opportunity to earn some money taking care of an elderly woman in her home. The alcoholic, drug-dealing friend followed and Mighty Mouth remained associated with him.
It was during this time in his life that Mighty Mouth and I became friends, hanging out in his driveway and sharing details of our storied journeys. He reflected on the flood that washed his old life away and his dealings with the Angel of Death. He spoke of being terrified and losing the life he had become accustom to, but in hindsight, he realized the silver lining – the blessing – that beginning over had offered him.
But something was never right with Mighty Mouth. No matter how many times I hung out with him, and despite his seemingly rejuvenated approach to life – his smile, his laughing, his desire to talk about how great everything suddenly was – it felt as though he still lived in the shadow of something dark and grave…something he truly hadn’t escaped from his own Ground Zero amidst the waters of Hurricane Katrina.
One late summer afternoon, Mighty Mouth showed up at my door in a state of despair. The elderly woman in his care had decided to kick him out and informed him that his services were no longer needed.
I asked Mighty Mouth what had happened and he told me that he had gotten back into the drug scene with the old stench-filled barnacle whom he had allowed to follow him up to Colorado. Mighty Mouth was trying to earn some extra cash on the side and the elderly woman found out that he was conducting criminal operations out of her basement.
The moral of the story is that Mighty Mouth decided (albeit from his kind heart) to hold onto a negative piece of his past during the process of rebuilding. He held onto an aspect of his past that kept him in the raw carnage of his previous Ground Zero, the “new” life he was building being condemned to brokenness when the Angel of Death inevitably decided to approach once again.
So how are we – in our brokenness – supposed to avoid just that? Where do we start and how are we supposed to figure out what to hang on to and what to get rid of in order to keep the Angel of Death from haunting us and breaking us over and over again?
When I got out of my one-night stay in jail, I knew that I couldn’t move forward by myself and sought the support of a man whom I had previously gone to for advice when dealing with difficult emotions and thoughts. For the sake of this book, I’ll be referring to him as ‘TS’, or “The Shelter” because of his ability to shield me from the confusing turmoil in my soul for at least an hour a day.
Six months before my arrest for domestic violence, I chose TS to be my therapist. My ex-fiancé and I had sailed into the roughest waters we had ever been (so-to-speak), and I made the decision to seek a professional’s help in assisting me down the path of exiting acquaintances with my significant other.
My idea was to slowly wean myself out of the relationship by the end of my former fiancé and I’s lease (seven months later). TS was quick to tell me how foolish of an endeavor this would be. He told me that it was silly to spend my money on therapy while still in the relationship because nobody – not even myself – could help me move forward while still embedded in my own rotting carnage. Naturally, this made me think: ‘Well, who the hell is this guy? Screw him…I’m smart, I’ll figure it out myself.’
Of course he needn’t rub it in my face six months later, but it was a valuable lesson. Too many people (and especially young people) in our self-centered and individualistic culture think they can handle difficult situations by themselves when in reality, the majority of the time they tend to make it worse. It’s almost as if we’ve been conditioned by our society to feel embarrassed to seek help from others. As if it is a sign of weakness. And we’ve become so fearful of being embarrassed that we let our Ground Zeroes grow and grow until the rot and unhappiness become so great and our broken nature can no longer be ignored.
TS wasn’t surprised to receive a phone call from me after being arrested, and upon starting up therapy again, I told him that I was ready to listen – that I no longer wanted to live in the shadow of the Angel of Death. I wanted to figure out what I needed to leave behind regardless of how difficult it might be.
Chapter 2
Faith, Chance, and Bologna Sandwiches
‘Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.’ (PoM; 202)
These are the words of Joseph Campbell in an interview series with journalist Bill Moyers. Not satisfied with such a seemingly careless and simple suggestion, Moyers goes on to challenge Campbell in the following dialogue:
MOYERS: But what about chance? A drunken driver turns the corner and hits you? That isn’t your fault. You haven’t done that to yourself.
CAMPBELL: From that point of view, is there anything in your life that did not occur as by chance? This is a matter of being able to accept chance. The ultimate backing of life is chance – the chance that your parents met, for example! Chance, or what might seem to be chance, is the means through which life is realized. The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises. Another war has been declared somewhere, and you are drafted into an army, and there go five or six years of your life with a whole new set of chance events. The best advice is to take it all as if it had been of your intention – with that, you evoke the participation of your will. (PoM; 202-203)
Upon first reading Campbell’s perspective of chance and acceptance, I was offended and angry. What a lackluster explanation for all of those who have been tragically widowed or lost loved ones in the events that took place September 11th, 2001. What a heartless bit of advice for those who get diagnosed with cancer or get raped in a dark alleyway. Are we supposed to just accept these moments in our life in which we are broken ‘as if [they] had been of [our own] intention’?
But that’s not exactly Campbell’s point upon further reflection. His words seem built on the assumption that people are conditioned to seek an explanation for the tragedies they experience. They need to have an answer for why they are at Ground Zero and what caused it. When they can’t find an answer (or even when they feel they have found an answer), their frustration is more easily directed towards others.
Campbell advises that we not get stuck on blaming or explaining, but focus on handling where we are in the moment as it pertains to building a positive future.
In the previous chapter, I quoted Campbell as suggesting that ‘faith’ functions in moving people with religious backgrounds forward in the face of tragic situations. But there’s something more here. These ideas of ‘faith’ and ‘chance’ seem at odds with one another when trying to explain the unexplainable, and one needs to understand the difference between the two and how they apply to individual worldview before beginning the process of rebuilding.
I’m sure you’ve been asked the question: ‘Do you believe everything happens for a reason?’ at some point in your life. Take a second to think about how you would answer this question right now, and why you would answer it the way you have.
Your findings may tell some great truths about who you are at your foundation and how your experiences (or lack thereof) dealing with the realization of Ground Zero have shaped you – where you’ve built your current worldview from and how you are likely to interpret future events.
Your findings will also speak volumes to your personal feelings regarding the concepts of ‘faith’ and ‘chance’.
When you stand in your own personal carnage and Ground Zero landscape, you are faced with many choices – choices that will determine whether or not you will be destined to revisit Ground Zero again in your future. ‘Faith’ and ‘chance’ are the characters that will drive your story from this point forward. One of them is to be the protagonist, and the other the antagonist.
For my father, he’s faced Ground Zero at least twice in his life and perhaps he’s got another trip there planned in his future. He’s a chance guy, plain and simple. There’s no predetermined path or greater intervention at work. It’s a bunch of “B”ologna “S”andwiches to him.
The first time he faced Ground Zero was when he was but a child – not even to the double-digits in age yet. His father and most important role model (my grandfather) was electrocuted to death. It devastated him – as it would any child in those circumstances and ever since that day, my father remains convinced that there couldn’t possibly be a God because if there was, He wouldn’t let a good man like my Grandpa Stanley die that day. It was chance, it had to be chance. Faith would be forever broken to my father.
My Dad’s past brings up a good question – a question that many search long and hard for an answer to and never find a single thing. As a result, many people become discouraged and give up their faith. The question being: ‘If God existed, why would He let bad things happen to good people?’
Now let’s step aside for a moment and just fess up to something. We all make mistakes and we all know that we make mistakes, that shouldn’t be a revelation to any us. But let’s face it, despite our mistakes and whether our actions match up with our heart’s intentions or not, most of us would like to believe that we are “good” people deep down. Sure it’s easy for us to look at others and say: ‘what a prick!’ or ‘that arrogant asshole…he doesn’t think about anybody except himself!’ But us? Regardless of our demeanor, our look, our lifestyle…we’re “good” people (remember…raw carnage is the outcome of ignorance!).
Having that squared away, it’s only natural for us to question why bad things would happen to good people, especially when we are faced with our own Ground Zero.
Those who lose their faith turn to the only logical explanation: chance. There’s no such thing as miracles or acts of God. What one person calls a miracle, a chance person might call luck or simply a situation where someone beats the normal odds or expectations regarding typical outcomes. Like making a half-court shot in basketball or successfully completing a hail mary pass in football, it’s not a miracle, just a case of beating the odds – the chance that things happened just right to create something “spectacular”. Of course, the type of rationalizing a chance person uses for miracles is also applied to disaster and tragedy.
For those who depend on religious faith (I believe Campbell unfairly associates faith with religion but we’ll dive into that later), there must be a reason behind everything. There’s a reason that Tim Tebow performed “miracles” on the football field in 2011 for the Denver Broncos. There’s a reason that my Grandpa Stanley was electrocuted. It’s all a part of “God’s plan”, even if we can’t or aren’t supposed to know the reasons for certain tragedies or miracles, there still lies a reason somewhere deep in the cosmos. It’s what I like to call “The Job Theory”. That regardless of the negative things that happen in our lives, as long as we keep God in our hearts and not forsake Him, we’ll find happiness and truth in the end.
So as we stand at Ground Zero, every single one of us searches for how we got there, but more importantly, we search for the ‘why’, the explanation that will prevent us from arriving back at that point again. Oftentimes the answer to ‘why’ doesn’t lie in outside factors as we’d like to think. The answers to ‘why’ (if we can find them at all) lie within and we don’t like to recognize this. We’re “good”, remember? It must have been something else, a bad circumstance or some other person. But we still ask ourselves: ‘why would something like this (Ground Zero) happen to me?’
Such an endless loop of thinking fueled by our reluctance to look within – not being able to “look in the mirror” so-to-speak in an honest fashion and examine the “local” – eventually leads us to believe that the explanation is more “global”. The explanation must be held in this battle between chance and faith. We begin to feel as though we have to pick one of them to satisfy our craving for ‘why’ before we can properly try to move on and begin cleaning up Ground Zero.
But in reality, it really is a bunch of “B”ologna “S”andwiches. Neither of them are completely healthy (and I guess bologna sandwiches technically aren’t either…), but we don’t know where else to look. We’re conditioned not to criticize ourselves, only others.
After the first few sessions with TS, it became apparent to him that I was stuck on this question of ‘why’. Why did my former fiancé decide to cheat on me? I treated her so well… Why – if she loved me as she claimed she did so many times, even until the end – was she so unhappy with the relationship that we had?
TS had to stop me on our third or fourth session while I was in the middle of the same ‘why would something like this happen to me? Why would God punish me like this?’ rant that was becoming a trend.
“MD,” he said, “I really want you to think about this for a second.” I fiddled with a Ghirardelli chocolate wrapper in my hand, wishing TS had more of the milk and caramel flavor in his guest basket. “What if there’s not an answer to ‘why’?”
“There has to be an answer.” I spat back.
“Okay,” he recomposed himself, “Suppose there is, and suppose you find it. Would it make you feel better?”
“Maybe…” I said after a bit of thought.
“Would it bring you peace of mind?”
“In a way I guess, but it would probably make me even more angry. Like: ‘why didn’t she tell me five years ago so I didn’t have to waste all that time to get to this point?’”
“And now you’re back at ‘why’.” TS explained.
He had taught me a quick and valuable lesson. Something very simple that many people don’t think about when faced with the tragedies which ultimately shape them. TS taught me to accept that there really are ‘why’ questions which don’t have an answer, and even if they do (or we think they do), who cares? It will only lead you down a rabbit-hole of endless other ‘why’ questions.
So when your grandfather gets electrocuted to death or your daughter is shot and killed in a school shooting, Joseph Campbell’s bit of advice actually seems pretty sound. He tells us not to get stuck in blaming or explaining, but to focus on handling the life that arises. There is no answer to ‘why’ these things happen, and supposing there is, the answer oftentimes isn’t attainable in this life. Getting frustrated and blaming others (including God by discarding your faith or by simply accepting chance as the answer) is lazy and selfish. Trying to move forward when you’re stuck on the question of ‘why’ becomes impossible – an endeavor drowned in frustration and negativity. To get stuck on ‘why’ is to forever be stuck with the torture of your own Ground Zero.
Chapter 3
The world’s Morse code…
A mentor and life coach of mine once told me: ‘When you have faith, you have everything. When you lose faith, you have nothing.’
This word – this idea – of ‘faith’ keeps popping up and before moving forward in the journey of rebuilding broken, we need to figure out how ‘faith’ plays a role in our own lives and how having ‘faith’ can make a difference within the realm of spirituality regardless of our religious orientation (or lack thereof).
To do so, I figured it would be an interesting idea to ask my friends, family, and readers via social media what they felt ‘faith’ was, or what it meant to them personally. Here are some of the responses that I received to the prompt ‘faith is ________.’:
JOSE: confidence.
SAM: the ability to look forward and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
BRUCE: faith is believing something you know ain’t true. –Mark Twain (several people ‘liked’ this)
EMILY: faith is believing in something or someone because your heart tells you to.
DAVINA: This is just one of the many aspects of faith, but…believing that one day you will achieve your goal, even in the face of failure. You have to keep fighting and you have to believe in what you want, even if others don’t.
JASON: optional. (some people ‘liked’ this)
GERA: believing without seeing.
MATT: unconditional.
A.J.: inevitable.
EBER: faith is glory.
COURTNI: faith is strength.
JESSICA: faith is accepting that we have no control and understanding that it’s okay to not know the answers to certain things.
STEPHEN: faith is the understanding and acceptance that everything happens for a reason. The hard part being the acceptance. (some people ‘liked’ this)
LEAH: faith is submission to authority for fear of a horrifying socially constructed consequence J (lots of people ‘liked’ this)
MICHAEL: faith is a stripper I once knew…faith is also a George Michael song. But really, faith is a matter of perspective.
DAWNA: knowing God will, knowing He can, knowing He wants to even though my doubts say otherwise. Listen to His voice over all others, take a deep breath, and keep trudging forward because His hand is always holding mine.
KEVIN: Perseverance!!! Add to it what you will; a god, any higher power, or confidence in self…faith means you are going to work your butt off to make sure any and every situation ends up the way it is supposed to…in your favor! No matter how long it takes.
VINCE: faith is knowing yourself.
Some interesting responses to be sure, but it’s intriguing to really notice the responses that got the most attention (as determined by the amount of social media users that ‘liked’ a particular comment or opinion the most).
Leah’s comment about faith being related to submission, authority, and socially constructed fear garnered the most attention, followed by Bruce’s Mark Twain quote suggesting that faith is believing in something you know isn’t true.
What does this say about faith and what does it mean that the majority of social media users I polled (approximately 1000) identified with a more skeptical and ominous perception of faith? Are we losing this idea of faith (whatever it may or may not be) in our culture? Why has it become trendy, humorous, and accepted by so many to mock it? If you were to ask the people who partake in such mockery, the answers would undoubtedly be scattered across the board and influenced by individual experience, but that’s not important. The answers to these questions really don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. What matters is the fact – yes, the fact – that so many people (way beyond the 1000 I polled) share a similar sentiment, and this sentiment is fueled by the very world we live in. This is worth realizing when you are standing at your Ground Zero.
On the flip side of the coin, there were users such as Dawna and Jessica who seem to attribute faith and one’s ability to demonstrate and experience faith to a religious context. This is similar to the stereotype that Joseph Campbell displayed when citing that religious folks rely on the concept of faith to move them forward when faced with tragic events.
A large part of the negative stigma faith seems to have in our culture I believe stems from the quick association people make between faith and religion.
When really terrible things do happen in life – and they are happening at a much greater pace than heartwarming things – it has become a stereotype that religious people use faith as a kind of band-aid if you will to hide the fact (also known as rationalizing) that terrible events may occur without reason. Instead, faith allows religious people to believe that terrible events have a purpose in “God’s plan”, whether we know it or not, whether it’s a “test”, or whether it’s something else entirely, having faith in God will pull us through the most difficult of times.
Such displays of faith within religion have unfortunately allowed those without a religious background to create a negative stigma or stereotype in which faith is easily mocked.
The difference in opinion regarding faith has become a sort of battlefield. Ironically, the warriors who fight against one another in such a battle have faith that their train of thought merits greater or more valid meaning in the overall outlook of life (and this difference in opinion regarding faith isn’t just confined to the non-religious vs. the religious, it also plays a role in the religious vs. the religious, and the non-religious vs. the non-religious).
Regarding the concept of Ground Zero, faith is something that one should try to understand from many different perspectives before making a decision on how they should proceed forward with their own life. It cannot be understated the importance that one gain an awareness of the influences in their own lives through childhood and adolescence in regard to individual conditioning.
As you stand on the horizon of your own broken landscape, the best thing you can do before moving forward is examine yourself. Examine the way in which you were raised and how your understanding of faith might have been influenced by your parents, your friends, or the communities that you grew up in.
Faith indeed is a powerful tool when faced with life’s harsh, cruel, and sad realities. But it’s a tool that we – as a people – have mostly forgotten how to use. Like a phonograph or a Morse code machine. If someone put it in front of you, you’d most likely say you’ve heard of it, but you don’t know how to use it. With faith, take a moment to really think about what it means to you (be it positive or negative), why you think this, and most importantly, what you would like faith to mean to you under the most ideal of circumstances.
Chapter 3.1
Into the Rain
In the last chapter, I asked friends, family, and readers via social media to finish the sentence: ‘faith is _____.’ Beyond some of the shorter replies I got, several people wrote me stories about how they had experienced faith in their lives.
The next few subchapters will be detailing some of the stories I received as well as an account of faith as I feel it has been experienced in my life. While I do strongly believe that faith can serve as a function of spirituality separate from religion, it should be mentioned that the following stories do exemplify faith within what some would consider a religious context. So if you’re not one for such stories, I encourage you to skip ahead to Chapter 4 where the journey toward rebuilding broken continues. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the following stories and find inspiration in the power that faith can provide us during our most difficult moments.
In May of 2010, I graduated with my Masters degree in English from Colorado State University. It was supposed to be one of the most joyous days of my life, but something was amiss. Something wasn’t quite right.
I questioned the path I had worked so hard to follow, to become a teacher and role model to the rest of the world. Had it been a mistake? Should I have followed one of the many other paths I could have taken along the way – one of the many other paths that would have brought me more fame and fortune? I could have become the next Johnny Depp. I could have worked under Ron Howard and learned the ropes at becoming a feature film director. But no, I choose education. I was wise enough to figure out that fame and fortune aren’t accompanied by true happiness. So it couldn’t have been a mistake…it had to be something else that loomed over my life like a shadow and took the wind from my soul as only something wretched could do.
A month after graduating, I thought it would be special to replace the ring that my ex-fiancé had allegedly “lost” (or pawned I’m convinced in retrospect) when she was cheating on me while we lived in Las Vegas.
It was supposed to be a symbol of recommitment for the two of us, something that despite our tumultuous and disastrous past would bring us together once again and motivate us to find the flame of intimacy we had at the very beginning.
With friends, we went to a Colorado Rockies baseball game and were invited to watch a fireworks display from the field afterwards. It was a spectacular show to be sure, and from the cool green grass of the outfield at Coors Field, I gave her the replacement ring. She seemed to beam with happiness and excitement, but when I pulled out the camera to take a picture, her mood sobered rather quickly.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing.” She answered back. “I just don’t want any pictures of it right now…I don’t really want people to see it yet, that’s all.”
Something was definitely amiss – something was terribly broken…I could feel it. Over the next few days, it became apparent that she didn’t want “people” on social media sites seeing she was engaged, and that’s why she wouldn’t allow me to take pictures. For me, that was the final red flag that signaled the end of the relationship – that was the wrong path I had been pursuing for so many years…
During this period of time, I had also begun my first teaching job at an alternative high school in Greeley, Colorado. And for those of you who don’t know, Greeley is a city submerged in poverty with a very high number of non-English speaking immigrants (many of them being illegal). There’s also a large gang population in Greeley being influenced directly from larger gang communities in Los Angeles and Dallas.
While the school was filled with students determined to get their way through violence and intimidation, it really became my home – my escape from a depressing personal life full of strife, dishonesty, and negativity. As bad of a place as Greeley might be considered, that school became my haven during such a period in my life. The students – as “rough” and labeled as they were by society – became my inspiration to take agency over the problems I had. The students in Greeley gave me hope because they came from far worse circumstances than I did, and behind their tough exteriors, they had allowed their hardships to transform them into some of the most intelligent, kind, caring, compassionate, loving, and understanding people I’ve ever met.
Over the first few months of teaching in Greeley, I developed strong relationships with my students – both as a teacher and as a friend / life coach outside of the classroom.
As October and November of that year carried on, my students became knowledgeable to the fact that I struggled with my personal relationship outside of school. They were quick to encourage me that things would get better as long as I allowed myself to believe so. Now, I know it’s easy enough for anybody to say that (it’s actually become quite cliché), but coming from these type of students – these type of adolescents who had been through far worse (witnessing murders, being raped, abandonment…basically, if you can think of the most horrific things a child could experience, these kids had) it meant something entirely different.
One day in early December – amidst some of the most difficult days I faced; keep in mind that I was working with TS during this time to help me end my ten year relationship – one of my most beloved students (let’s call her La Pluma Blanca) came to visit me after school while waiting for her ride. We said hello, joked about the funny things that had happened in the school that day, and then she got very serious with me.
“MD,” she said, “have you ever thought about just asking God for what you need?”
Although I did consider myself spiritual and I believed in God, I didn’t believe in organized religion. Thus, I very rarely prayed – just every once in a while out of desperation. I didn’t like the idea of relying on anybody else (even if it was a higher power) for support, direction, and decision-making in my life.
“I don’t really think God works that way.” I told her; she was the daughter of a highly-regarded preacher and religion played a large part in her life.
“Yes He does.” She stated very matter-of-factly.
“I can’t just pray that He takes my sadness away and it’ll disappear.”
“That’s not what I mean, MD.”
“What do you mean then?” she had my interest.
“God knows what’s in your heart, you just have to have faith in Him and really pray for what you need.”
“I need this sadness and hurt to go away.”
“Is that really what you need?”
Moments later her cell phone buzzed and La Pluma Blanca was gone. Her cryptic words had left me frustrated and I sat in my desk chair thinking about it for what seemed to be a long time.
“Heads-up!” another student’s voice (we’ll name her Aliada) called out as she entered my classroom and tossed a tennis ball at me, snapping me from my moment of contemplation. “How’s it going, friend?” She asked as she sat on one of the tables. I explained what La Pluma Blanca had said to me and told her that I was confused. “I dunno.” Aliada shrugged her shoulders. “Wanna play catch?”
We talked a bit more about it, nothing substantial while we tossed the tennis ball across the room at each other, sometimes trying to bounce it off desks and chairs to make it tougher to catch. She told me about her twenty-something year-old boyfriend who was living in her basement and the argument that she had with her mom, but all I could think about was trying to figure out what I truly needed if it wasn’t for my sadness to go away.
Eventually, we stopped throwing the tennis ball around because Aliada realized night was falling outside and she should probably leave. On her way out of my classroom, she stopped and very casually told me: “Sometimes it’s not about hoping for the rainstorm to go away, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain. Good night, friend!”
A few more difficult weeks passed and I knew that I couldn’t live like this anymore. I had put a great deal of thought into it and finally realized that my half-hearted devotion to God wasn’t going to provide me with anything except a false sense of security. I needed to stop praying that the rainstorm would just magically stop. I needed to pray for the courage to weather the storm and not just stand in it. I needed to soak it up and learn from it. I needed to really experience the rain and like so many plants of the Earth, let the cloud’s showers allow me to grow.
I put my hands together and prayed. But it wasn’t out of desperation this time. Yes I was hurting inside and I had been entertaining hopeless thoughts, but I was at peace with my decision. I no longer prayed for tangible objects or events. I asked God to take my heart and allow me to truly live as one of His children – to allow me to really live my life for Him. I prayed for His guidance and His courage to trust Him regardless of the potential hardships it might bring.
Starting the next morning, I felt a kind of clarity in my spirit – a kind of powerful, yet peaceful essence within me. Skeptics may say that it was not God, but rather a personally-induced determination to reinvent myself, but the point is…it really doesn’t matter what it was. I’m not sharing this experience with readers to try to get them to believe in God or to even justify their own belief in God. I’m sharing this experience to show the power of faith. Whether God was directing me (which I believe He was) or not, the fact of the matter remains that I embraced the idea of faith. I had faith in a brighter future, I had faith in making better choices, and most importantly, I had faith in myself.
Following my faith allowed me to finally realize my own Ground Zero and the rotten carnage I had been in denial of for far too many years. Embracing the concept of faith led me to realize just how broken I actually was, and without it, how broken I probably would remain. And finally, without remaining cognizant of the concept of faith and its power, I surely wouldn’t have been able to keep on the path that allowed me to start rebuilding my own broken.
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