Yelling at the radio

I found myself yelling at the radio today.  This was the song: 

“I won't pretend to know what you're thinking

I can't begin to know what you're going through

I won't deny the pain that you're feeling

But I'm gonna try and give a little hope to you

Just remember what I've told you

There's so much you're living for

There's a light at the end of this tunnel X2 / For you, for you

There's a light at the end of this tunnel

Shinin' bright at the end of this tunnel / For you, for you

So keep holdin' on

You've got your disappointments and sorrows

You ought to share the weight of that load with me

Then you will find that the light of tomorrow

Brings a new life for your eyes to see

So remember what I've told you

There's so much you're living for.”

Why was I yelling?  Because the song starts out saying the equivalent of, “I have no idea what you’re going through” and then goes on to say, “But I’m going to tell you what to think and feel about it.”

Unsolicited advice.  Yuck.


In my experience, when your life is falling apart, many people are quick to give advice.  To listen, not so much.  People are quick to want to give a positive spin to things.  To sit and cry with you and wait out the long haul, not so much.  To actually take part in your suffering, and in doing so, to help relieve it through their own sacrifice of listening and living together, not so much. 

So this is what I was yelling:


“I won't pretend to know what you're thinking / I can't begin to know what you're going through”

SO ASK ME!  LISTEN TO ME!  STOP TALKING!!!

“But I'm gonna try and give a little hope to you”

NO THANK YOU!  JUST STOP TALKING!  I’LL FEEL BETTER IF YOU LISTEN INSTEAD!

“Just remember what I've told you…”

IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M GOING THROUGH, WHY SHOULD I BE LISTENING TO YOU?  JUST LISTEN ALREADY!

  

“There's so much you're living for/ There's a light at the end of this tunnel”

YOUR CLICHES DON’T HELP AT ALL – DON’T YOU THINK I’VE HEARD THESE BEFORE?  I DON’T NEED EMPTY WORDS, I NEED A FRIEND TO SIT WITH ME NOW AND HOLD ME AND LISTEN AND CRY WITH ME!

“So remember what I've told you…”

SHUUUUUTTTTT UPPPPPPPPPPPPP


 And the song ends.  And I’m left feeling the way I felt after every bright hopeful statement some happy Christian left me with when my life was falling apart.  I didn’t want to hear people telling me to “Trust in God.”  Yes, I’ve read those Scriptures and heard those sermons too.  I know that truth.  I believe it.  But believing it – and living it out -- doesn’t change the fact that my heart has been ripped out of my chest, and it hurts like the dickens.  I don’t need you to tell me something I already know.  Yes, God is faithful, yes, I believe in him, yes, I have hope.  But RIGHT NOW I need you to pay attention to the fountains of pain spurting out of my chest and help me figure out how to survive that, and not just say your happy piece and walk away and leave me to deal with it on my own.  Actually, you telling me that while I’m suffering like this feels judgmental and condescending.  It feels like you’re saying I don’t have enough faith, and if I did, I wouldn’t feel this way.

I especially didn’t want people giving me a positive spin on my life to end the conversation.  The way I felt was that those Pollyanna statements weren’t for my benefit.  They were for the speakers’ benefit.  They saw just a glimpse of the horrific, nuclear-scale damage that marital abuse wreaked on my life, and it was intensely disturbing to them because it happened within the church.  And they could not walk away with that weighing on their happy Christian lives without feeling unsettled.  They had to say something uplifting so that they could walk away feeling better – both that the situation wasn’t as bleak as it felt, and that they had actually done something amazing to help me by offering me the hope-filled, living words of God! 

But often I wouldn’t let them.  Because they got to go home and live their relatively happy lives and forget about mine, but I had to walk away with that hole in my chest and live with it.  I didn’t want them to be under any false impression that their clichéd words had made a difference.  I wanted the reality of my suffering to be validated as more than a few seconds’ worth of discomfort quickly overturned by happy thoughts.  Gospel overturns misery and ugliness, yes.  But it is not a quick process in a few blithe words.  It’s pain, suffering, sacrifice on the road to resurrection.  Resurrection has quite a nasty prerequisite:  death.  To fast forward to Easter Sunday and ignore the torment of Good Friday and the quiet despair of Good Saturday, is to devalue what Resurrection really meant.  You want to help me?  Sit with me through the weekend, help me prepare the burial cloths and spices, go weeping with me to the cemetery, and prepare to move that big-ass rock that’s covering the grave of my most deeply cherished hopes.  THEN you get to rejoice with me when resurrection comes.

Once when I was in the depths of my devastation, a revered, respected missionary, a leader of the church, and a trainer of new missionaries, stopped me in the church lobby and asked me how I was doing.  I was honest with him.  I don’t remember what unpretty words I used, but they left him disturbed, to say the least. But he gave me some pretty words about how women who were abused in the Bible all went on to have fantastic ministries glorifying God. 

If I were being polite, as befitting a quiet Sunday afternoon, I would have agreed and thanked him for his pretty words and walked away.  But I had those fountains of pain gushing from my chest, and so I was feeling a bit ornery. 

“Oh, really?”  I said.  “What was Dinah’s ministry?”

Revered missionary looked blank.  “Dinah?”

“Yes, she was a woman who was abused.  What happened to her?”

“Well, uh,” he fumbles.  “Well, Tamar went on to have a great lineage.”

“Yes, after she fought for her rights – doing something that no Christian today would approve.  But what about the other Tamar?” 

“The other Tamar?”

“Yes, Absalom’s sister, the one that Amnon raped.  She lived on in her brother’s house, a desolate woman.  And because of her, out of anger and hatred, Absalom killed her rapist and then tried to usurp David’s throne.  Her situation didn’t end in good.  And who knows what happened to her after Absalom died.”

Silence.

“Oh, and then!” I’m really warming up now.  “What about all the concubines who were raped by Absalom as a direct judgment of David’s raping Bathsheba?  They all lived as desolate women too in a forbidden wing of the palace.” 

Silence.

“Well, er, uh, I’m sure Dinah and Tamar and those women had some peace in heaven,” he fumbles, finally.

“Maybe,” I say. 

Silence.

Finally we said goodbye and walked away from each other.  Yes, I made an older man uncomfortable.  Maybe I shouldn’t have.  But I just could not let him, this man who had never understood what it was like to live through years of abuse and suffer the loss of reputation, ministry, family, and dignity as I had, reduce my life to a Christian punchline and walk away.  I was bawling my brains out every moment I had alone.  He could stand to be a little uncomfortable for a few moments in the presence of my pain.

Ok, so I'm not so socially awkward that I do this every time a Christian makes this kind of statement. Usually I just smile, say thanks, and move away -- physically and emotionally -- as quickly as I can.  I save my shouting for the radio.

The song does have one redeeming line, which is:  “You ought to share the weight of that load with me.”

This line shows that, like all those well-meaning Christians, there’s a genuine desire to help, but people just don’t know how.  Somehow they think that giving uninformed advice helps.  Hey, everyone!  It doesn’t.  Listening and caring and having a nonjudgmental, learning attitude – “help me understand what you’re going through” -- shares the load in a way that giving advice often does not. 

So when the song says, “You ought to share the weight of that load with me,”

I shout in response, in my car, “SO SHUT UP ALREADY, LISTEN, AND SHARE THE LOAD!”