Morning Reading - A book review, of sorts

This morning I finished reading a compilation book of Henri Nouwen's work. He did not write the book, but rather it is numerous writings and sermons of his, based around a single topic, that were gathered together in after his death in 1996.

That book would be, naturally, none other than Turn My Mourning Into Dancing.

I've been flirting with the idea of reading it for years and years. I think it was seven years ago that I first found it while helping my Father move his office. I'll be honest-- I grabbed it because it had beautiful cover art and the word "dancing" in the title. Not very deep of me, I know.

So, for seven years, it's been sitting on me "to read" shelf, mostly untouched. Perhaps picked up every now and then to say, "Oh, I ought to give this back.... but it's so pretty!"

I began reading it this last fall in response to some of the deepest grief I have ever felt. I felt I was drowning, I didn't know where God was, I didn't know what he thought, I didn't know if I had ever heard him--- or maybe my whole life was a cacophony of crazed ideas born out of mental instability. I seriously questioned myself, and my understanding of, essentially, everything. It was a break or make it moment for me. Which, started with me resigning myself to breakage, and months later, finds me made much a different person than before, purely by the unending mercy of God.

During that time, as I searched for some sort of meaning or hope in the midst of so many voices, I picked up that little book. No one around me hand answers for me. Or rather, they each had their own answer that only served to further confuse me. There was advice galore, but my heart remained in anguish because it was not God. I needed a personal encounter from the loving divine, and I could not find him. Or perhaps, did not want to.

In many respects, I was discontent because I was begging for affirmation, the statement of rightness, a miraculous sign confirming my unfailing righteousness, simultaneously as I begged for condemnation, a casting out, rejection by God, and ultimately, damnation.

There was a war in my soul between my selfish needs and my self-hatred.

Confusion reigned incessantly in my mind, for I saw only these two paths, and whenever I began to venture down one or the other I immediately knew that neither were where God was. But, oh the horror of my narrow perception! To think there are only two paths, and know that I would not find him on either. How greatly I feared he'd abandoned me altogether.

That purple cover, was suddenly remembered, and as a last ditch effort (knowing that Henri Nouwen was an amazing man of God with a deep understanding of his heart) and a hope that it was set me straight, I began to read "Turn My Mourning Into Dancing."

It's taken me months. In part due to business, but mostly because I was allowing time foe living the things written in it's pages. I come out of it now, having finished this morning, grateful for one of the vehicles that took my from my broken state and helped remake me much different from before.

Superlatives come to mind in description, but rarely actually express enough meaning. So, in short, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, is the best book I have ever read in dealing with the issues of grief, the mortal, the immortal, sorrow, loss, love, and death.

As we begin to develop the curriculum for the ministry schools, it will, no doubt, be part of my resources. Specifically, as I am working on (co-teaching) the class on inner healing.

I am often convinced that near no one truly knows how grieve, and that is the source of much (if not most) mental illness. In my work, I have an endless stream of ill people in and out seeking care and aide in one form or another--- the stories are different, the response so often the same = grief never truly grieved.

Noting here, that grieving and crying are very different things. One of the things that I learned about myself this past year was that for all my years of crying, and crying, and crying, and crying, I almost never grieved. My tears were merely an uncontrollable outworking of pain too great to contain. While all the while, I was very much keeping it contained. Even in seeking help or sympathy, it was not for healing that I cried, but for justification in the midst of my pain.

Grief, on the other hand is the vulnerable, transparent, unsafe, un-containment of pain so that it may be healed, let go, and transformed.

How rarely we do.