So Tired...

A significant loss of any kind can force us to reconfigure how we find meaning and purpose in our lives.  For Job, that is too terrible to consider—at least at the beginning of his protest speech.  If my life does not mean what I thought it meant, Job seems to say, then perhaps it means nothing at all.  And if my life means nothing at all, perhaps that is because nothing means anything at all, Job seems to continue.  And if nothing means anything at all, then perhaps it would have been best for me to have died stillborn, Job seems to conclude.  “Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?” he asks in Job 3:11.  If there is not point, then why should I go on?

Loss causes us to pull back into ourselves as a defensive strategy.  In the midst of loss, I am tempted to concentrate all of Reality into myself, almost as a mathematical point—without height or length or depth, completely focused and concentrated.  

I can remember in the darkest days of my atheist youth that I saw myself as such an existential point.  Of course, it didn’t help that I was also infected with normal adolescent self-absorption.  But I did truly believe for a while that if I could not find meaning for my particular life, then I had to conclude that all of life was meaningless.  Nearly thirty-five years later I can smile at the arrogant presumption of such thinking.  But when we are driven into ourselves, that kind of thinking can make a great deal of sense.

And if all of life was meaningless, I thought to myself, nothing that I do matters in the Great Scheme of Things.  Why should I be bothered with all of the troubles and distractions and dilemmas of my life?  Never mind that, in my case, I had caused nearly all of those troubles, distractions and dilemmas.  Wouldn’t it be easier, quieter and more peaceful if I would just put an end to it all?  

In those moments, I wasn’t really seeking death as such.  I didn’t even think that far.  I was seeking rest.  I wanted freedom from pain and anxiety and uncertainty.  I wanted freedom from the turmoil and trials.  I didn’t want to struggle any more.

Not for a minute would I presume to know the mind of another person considering suicide.  But I know what my own experiences were.  I was sick in my heart and soul.  I felt so bad that I was overwhelmed.  The only release I could think of at that moment was to stop feeling altogether.  Obviously I didn’t act on that desire.  But it was very real.

I would suggest that Job shares with us a similar set of wishes in chapter 3.  If he had died at birth, now he would be at rest, he says.  “Now I would be lying down and quiet; I would be asleep; then I would be at rest with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuild ruins for themselves…” (Job 3:13-14).  His life was so profoundly dislocated that he could not even recognize it.  

For Job, it was as if he had never existed, so why should he now be alive?  “Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in?” (Job 3:23).  Just let me rest, Job says.  I have no energy to deal with rebuilding myself, my world, my system of meaning and order and purpose.  I’m just so tired.

Job’s words in verse twenty-four ring true in my own grief experiences.  He describes a profound exhaustion that feels like one must grasp for every breath.  “For my sighing comes like my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.”  I have been bone-tired after a long day’s physical labor.  I have been exhausted by intellectual struggle or pastoral work.  But no kind of tired is as deep as grief kind of tired.  

One has to remember simply to breathe.  There are those moments when I have realized that my chest has not risen for several seconds, and I take a deep, almost convulsive breath.  There are other moments when the sighs exit my body and drag my shoulders almost to my belly.  Too tired to eat, too tired to think, too tired to work, too tired to talk, too tired to cry—Job is just too tired.