Discourse 33: Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

The day I met the Devil (And it is in me)

It was the spring before my 8th birthday. Like most days when home I was running the hills behind my house, building forts, fighting bad guys and trying to track whitetail. I loved the woods, still do. Nature has always called to me, the solitude, the raw incomprehensible power. Often when quiet and alone I can hear God moving in the wind. Even now when I return to the site of the devil’s work, it is this power I feel and not what I found that day.

This was not always the case.

In previous discourse, I speak of how to move beyond our pain, to prepare for it, and what it means.

I have not talked much about my pain itself.

Not here at least. Not fully with my daughters yet either. And today I am only addressing one of my scars. I could call this my origin story.

Jasun Horsley asked why I had not revealed all of this to my children on his podcast where we were discussing the purpose of pain, and I had an answer, but it was only partially true. Right or wrong, when someone is a real victim, we look at them differently. Adults understand this. This knowledge modulates our interactions on some level. It does the same with children, especially your own. I wanted to wait until they could process it properly.

This was the answer I gave him, but in saying it out loud I began to question my motives. It was more layered than that. While I still think that much is true, that I wanted them to have proper discernment, there was something else. A hesitancy.

But why? I have been through hell already with this. I cried. I have fought. I have prayed and suffered. I have screamed at God demanding justification. I have crossed the Jordan and transmuted this problem of evil into good – I have moved on the other side of it. So why hesitate?

The release.

This pain reminded me what not to be, a sharp contrast to what I wanted to be. My stepfather abused my mother, both verbally and physically. He also beat the hell out of me. Often. I have scars on my face, mostly hidden by bold eyebrows and a full beard. My children only know that it was rough for a time because physical scars you cannot hide. They do not know I tried to kill him when I was eight. I pulled the trigger.

I wanted to grow to be the best father ever. Protect my children. Be the antithesis of his evil. He motivated me to not be like him. To be a good man. To be a good husband. To be clear, I had other motivations of good men in my life. Great men. But I felt- I lived the wrath of a weak man. I could not let my children suffer the same. Or my wife. Of course I would be willing to die for this cause, but more importantly- I was willing- am willing- to live for it. I have shielded them from that potentiality because of who, by the grace of God, I have built myself to be.

I have held this transmuted pain so long for motivation, but not on my sleeve. It has given me power because I was victorious over it. It is almost as if it were a silent trophy of an achievement that only I was aware of. If I could defeat him… I can defeat anything. God willing. Part of me that hesitated is not because they were not ready for it all, but because I was not ready to let it go. I have rationalized this by thinking I do not need them to know that I have suffered, a burden of thought they do not need.

But this was selfish, I was only thinking of myself, hoarding the story- and lesson- all for my own use.

I have transmuted this pain for a purpose, now it is time for me to be a witness.

In Discourse 32 I spoke of rejecting victimhood. In this I state that people tend to default to their circumstances, allowing themselves to be a causality of their environment, their race, their sex, even themselves.

In doing so, we forfeit our lives to be slaves to our oppressors, or perceived oppressors. Once a victim, always. Many believe its isn’t possible to rise above circumstances and that we are only products of our environment and immutable identities, hence the need for “equity” and externalized coping skills.

I reject this.

He doesn’t get to define me. My life is a living testimony. It was hard. I climbed the mountain and most of the time I wrestled with God. But I fought. I chose. This is why I reject victimhood.

He had already given me one scar in the year before this spring day. I knew he was a bastard, but I didn’t yet know he was evil. I had just got home from my real Dad’s for the weekend and had a great time. (He is a good man). I was greeted by my mother who was working with my grandfather on our garage door. She informed me of her separation from my stepfather, which produced a euphoric response in me that I have only experienced a few times in my life. I had always been so terrified that he was going to kill my mother, perhaps even me. Now I knew my mother was going to live! This was perhaps the first time in my life I truly experienced happiness without some dark burden in the corner of my heart. Elated, I wanted to celebrate this revelation with an adventure in the hills, which had always been my sanctuary from him as well as a medium for my imagination and curiosity. Before I left, my mother informed me that my dog, a black chow chow, was out running the hills and that I might run into him. She had not seen him as of yet that day. (In the country our dogs always run the hills)

My adventure that day remains vivid in my memory. It was one of the most beautiful days I can remember experiencing. It was cloudy, but with fluffy white friendly clouds. A yellow sun lit up the Appalachian hills, blue sky backlit the canvas. Warm, with a nice breeze and the smell of honeysuckle wafting in the air. On my way up to the ridge I picked some raspberries to snack on, everything felt right. I knew every square inch of this land just like my Shawnee ancestors. I may look Irish, but the hills were always part of my soul. There I was one, I was free. Especially on this day. For a brief time that day, I tasted the peace that passes all understanding. Then, the inversion.

It was easy for me to spot it. Like a scab on the surface of porcelain, it oozed a darkness that unsettled the whole forest and part of me deep inside that I had not yet known.

A black 55-gallon garbage bag lay just over a bank next to an oak tree. It was an alien on a strange world. I was the only human who frequented this spot with any real consistency. I would have assumed at the time I was the only person to walk this particular trail in years. How it got there was a mystery. Fearless on this day, with curiosity I opened the bag.

It was my three-year-old Chow-Chow.

Bludgeoned. Dismembered. Discarded for me to find.

I knew immediately that he had left me a present.

I did not collapse. I did not scream or cry. Not then. Something inside my little body exploded, but not in agony. Not in weakness. Not in destruction. This was an act of creation, an act of becoming.

My initial tangible thought was a disgust at the indignity. This was my dog, and he deserved better than to be thrown away as trash. I had to remedy this. I had lost dogs before. We buried them. But what I felt, it did not come from experience. It was an ancient feeling, awakened in my spirit.

My horror, my grief, my fear, even my thoughts were suspended as my body moved, my essence itself that precedes thought... pushed towards the singular task of taking him home.

At first, I tried to pick him up, but it was too heavy for my little body. So, I grabbed the bag and started to drag it. It began to get easier as I got over the ridge and started down the long slope into my back yard. I do not particularly remember the first part being too hard, but the bag on occasion would get caught in brush and start to tear. It did not become problematic until I was almost home when the bag started to fail.

You can probably guess what happened. Parts of my dog started to fall out. I was able to twist it, so the bag acted like a sled, which was able to hold the majority of the remains. However, when I walked into my backyard and then to the side of the garage where my mother and grandfather were, I was dragging the bag with my left hand and carrying his leg in my right.

The next moments are a blur. Now as a parent, with eyes to see, I could only imagine the horror my family felt. For many reasons. Apparently, the only thing I said at first was that “I found him.”

My mother tried to take me inside, but I refused. She told me what I already knew to be a lie, was that he was supposed to bury him- referring to my stepfather. She said she was going to tell me when I got home for the evening. My mother did not know he was dead. Roughly a month later he told me exactly how he did it, Mom tried to appease the horror with a white lie. Looking back as a parent, I do not blame her in the moment.

I did not throw a fit, I merely insisted on burying him right then. As my mother protested, I remember my grandfather bringing me a shovel with another one in his hand. He knew I needed it. Then my mother did. We loaded him into a wheelbarrow and took him to the edge of the yard and put him in the ground under a large walnut tree.

As we finished the task, I finally felt everything. Whatever it was that hatched inside of me, it pushed forward with ferocity.

A raw explosion of grief, I sobbed as my body rocked and I dropped to the ground, the full weight of gravity and atmospheric pressure on my very soul. I do not know how it happened, but I remember this sequence of events like it was yesterday. In one moment, I was in hell, it would be another 17 years until I would feel something so heavy upon me. It was if God himself had pushed me into the ground and into the bowels of the earth.

Then it stopped.

For a brief moment I felt the calm like the eye of a hurricane. I leaned back, looked up at the sky. It was beautiful, sunshine on a cloudy day. I remember looking back down at the fresh dirt…

While I was under the earth I found something, or it found me.

It took my grief and gave me power. I had never felt so alive, so invincible. As quickly as my grief came, it went. The brief pause was just a transition for when the Devil in I took hold of my reins and pulled me up. I tasted real anger for the first time in my life.

I literally roared like an animal.

Before the demon of acedia entered my life, I had to battle the demon of anger. I have made no secret of this. Yet, nobody that knows me, or who has known me since my early 20’s would say that I am an angry or violent man. I am firm and patient, but I remember the taste. I remember the power. I remember what the ancient call to justice feels like. Real justice. But I also remember what I can do with it. I remember the destruction without moderation. It took me years to take back the reins, to break the dark horse.

This moment was the genesis, a breaking point born from trauma. Anger traced to its source, pain. I never wanted to be vulnerable again. I wanted to protect those around me. I wanted to protect my mother… and anger made me think I could.

But this was not the end. It was not long after that that he managed to get back with my mother by extorting her again. During this time, I lived often with my grandparents, which I already did on occasion, but there were incidents. About six months after they got back together, he beat me with the gun that failed to discharge. He was then out of our lives permanently. A little over a year later when I turned 11, my real father moved back in.

Some people never feel power. Others cannot let go of it. For me, in this context, power is a sword that we use to fight our spiritual battles. It is what gives us courage to win. It is what we use to slay our dragons, to confront ourselves, to confront the world. My first dragon was a man, and I then projected him onto the world. The first sword that I picked up was anger, I thought it gave me real power. What it gave me was fear. Fear of the world. Fear of myself.

But it gave me a contrast. I saw the Devil, and the devil was I.

My pain without purification merely festered like a rotting corpse. I was dead. I needed to become something else, or I was going to become consumed by my demon. I needed a new sword, but I had to put the old one down to pick up my next one.

I suspect this day was the single most important day in my life. While it is one of the worst things I have ever experienced, it was a crucible that showed me ultimate power. Not the anger of Tartarus which manifested in my soul, but the power of its vanquisher.

The sword I picked up was Jesus Christ.

I have felt its raw transformative power. I have lived Ragnarök. I have felt the internal Armageddon. I had to die to my old self, I had to be born again through my pain, born again on the other side of suffering.

Everything that I have become I owe to this lesson. Pain and its daughter, anger, illuminated the cross I had to carry. For years I lamented God for this tribulation, and I struck out at people I should not have. But in the end, as promised, it was turned into good.

I do not need this lesson anymore, so I will release it to you. There is always a way through every obstacle. There is always hope. There is always salvation. There is always… the way. Sunshine can be found, even on the cloudiest of days.

I am ready for my next lesson, my Lord.

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

Meister Eckhart.