Personal Time of Darkness and Shadow

This portion of the retelling is very difficult to compress into small digestible portions.

Sending Donna home with Hilary and Ana brought excruciating pain to my soul and a dense fog over my understanding of God and His ways. I stayed behind with Marily for a couple of months while I completed some projects and dedicated time to our utmost family priority, adopting Ana. The completed adoption would be a source of peace in our lives. I was able to complete the adoption in six weeks. In retrospect, the entire adoption experience had God's fingerprints all over it.

After two months Marily and I joined the rest of our family. Within ten days we were at our new church assignment. We tried to pour out the life of Christ, only eternity will reveal results, but, the vessel of our life was damaged. We stayed at that small church for two years and then moved across the state. Ministry became mechanical, saying and doing the right thing, hours on end, days on end, months on end. Two events would shake me out of my comatose existence, both within a year of each other.

I must regress for a moment. During all of this time I continued to pray and read the bible and ponder the truth of God. At times praying brought great tears, tears of grief and sorrow, over friends left behind and wounds still bleeding.

During a youth outing Hilary collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. Entering the, Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, began an extended nightmare. Hilary, my Joyful Light, was so quiet. The silence of the room seemed married to the blipping of the cardiac monitor in a relationship of despair and more pain. Pain, I was becoming more intimate with this unwelcome heart resident each day.

Hilary had damaged her heart as a result of an eating disorder. Days later she was released, with a heart monitor and medication, at the age of fifteen. Just a couple of days later we admitted her to a small hospital that was referred to us. After the intake process Hilary was led to her room. As she was leaving us she pleaded to us to take her home and not to leave her. The doors shut and locked behind her and us. Donna and I sat in the parking lot and cried. Our tears brought no relief, only emptiness and questions impossible to answer. Why God? What is the purpose? Where are you? Our hearts and spirits are broken, what is the point of existence?

Post Traumatic Stress was determined to bring Donna's life to an end. The emotional damage from Zambia was now making her seriously ill. At one point she was in the hospital for more than a week due to stroke-like symptoms. Her doctor determined that she was having T.I.A. episodes. He told us that the stress in her life must be dealt with or she faced more illness and failing health.

In all honesty, I didn't really know how much more pain and despair we could endure. Many people would have had friends to share the burdens with. The few friends we had were far away, some far from us, not in distance, but in communication. People I thought close disengaged when we came back from Zambia. Our perception was, perceived failure, or not wanting to touch and understand our pain. At this point I made the decision to resign from our ministry.

A meeting to discuss our resignation, with our denominations leader, was a disaster. He told us in plain and very simple words that he, doesn't beg or ask pastors to stay. So many questions come to the minds of sincere seeking people when these events take place and they search in vain for answers. I had to come to the place where I asked every question. At that point, exhausted in mind and spirit, I gave up. I gave up searching for answers and gave up expecting God to answer me.

I thank God for the experience of doubt and pain. For the almost certainty, that God was absent and beyond my touch. Doubting His reality brought me to know a Greater Reality and certainty.  More later.