Death and Resurrection (of a Dream)

This is a week about death and life.

It’s about the grave and resurrection.

It’s about re-animating what we had believed to be cold corpses.

This idea of resurrection has particular meaning for me this year.

A few years ago, I died.

I don’t mean that my heart stopped pumping blood through my arteries and veins or that the pathways in my brain shut down.

No, I died a different kind of death, a death out of the public eye. No one was there to mourn. No services. No flowers. The closest thing to an obituary was something I wrote down in my journal one night as I reflected on what my life had come to:

I don’t want to feel anymore. I don’t want to be disappointed anymore. I don’t want to want or to yearn anymore. I want to be dead inside.

People who haven known me for a while know how significant those words are. How so far removed they are from who I am and have been since I was little. My whole life, I had dreamed of a great love. My heart has always been geared to burst out of my chest and spill over into everything I did, everyone I knew. I dreamed about it, thought about it, wrote about it, talked about it, sought after it and fought for it. I wanted passion and adventure in every aspect of my life.

But we’re led down strange roads sometimes. Rather than walking a path that led up the mountain toward the blue sky and clouds and breathless heights, I found myself wading through the lowland swamps of what would become the deepest, darkest valley I would ever encounter.

I was suddenly years into a relationship that turned everything I believed about love and life upside down.

Lower your expectations is what I heard over and over and over again. And so I did.

I lowered my aim from having a great love to having a good love.

But that wasn’t happening, either. Those expectations were still too high.

So I lowered it again from a good love to an okay love.

Still too high.

Over and over, my expectations dropped down the rungs until they were rock-bottom: I will survive this love. Even if this person doesn’t want to work on it, even if this person doesn’t want me, even if this person rejects me over and over and over again…I can survive it.

I went from fiercely declaring that I wanted a great love, a revolutionary love, to not wanting anything anymore. To put to death all of my desires. How far I had fallen. How shattered my dreams had become.

The only way I felt I could survive was to lay that dreamer in the grave and pour earth and rock over him until his cold body was completely covered.

That part of me died, and I left that dream for a great love and a great life to rot with me. I patted down the earth, I dusted off my hands, and I walked away feeling cold, like iron or ice.

Days passed. Months. Years.

The sun has passed over it hundreds of times. The moon has peeked at it with its pale gaze. Rain has come down and seeped past it. Snow has fallen and rested on top of it. Long grass has grown over it.

This week, though, something began to stir in the earth.

It was such a minute movement at first—a twitch, a tremble of the dirt.

But soon, the earth opened up, the grass parted, and light and air and hope rushed into the space only darkness had occupied.

God is resurrecting dreams for me this week.

It's been such a long night. It’s been such a deep grave. But I believe in a Jesus who destroys death.

I believe in a Jesus who reaches his hand into the earth, rips me from the mouth of darkness, and breathes air into my lungs.

I believe in a Jesus who resurrects dreams.

I believe he died and rose again.

I believe it because I’ve seen him do it with me once again.

***

Feature photo ©2013 Richard Browne | Flickr

The Four Words That Almost Buried Me

I have all kinds of phrases I use on a daily basis. Some I've picked up from friends: "Holy rip." - to be used as an expression of surprise or awe, like during the opening sequence of Gravity. "Holy rip. This is amazing." Also to be used as an expression of disgust, like during the second half of Gravity. "Holy rip. This is not happening."

Some I've picked up from TV shows: "TREAT YO SELF." - to be used to justify spending money without any rational thought, but I usually just say this before I eat an obscene amount of ice cream.

Some I started to use ironically but have now become a legitimate part of my vocabulary: "That's cray." - I don't even notice it anymore; it's that normal.

There's another phrase I started to use, and it was a spinoff of the FML trend:

I hate my life.

It was supposed to be funny. I spill my drink on myself at work (which happens way more often than it should for an adult)--"I hate my life." I forget my keys in the house when I leave in the morning--"I hate my life." The episode of How I Met Your Mother that I'm watching online freezes, so I have to start the whole thing over and sit through the marathon of ads that CBS.com runs--"I hate my life."

You know. The struggle is real. First world problems. Hashtag something-or-other.

But then something strange started to happen. I was going through a rough season. I would go to sleep hoping that I could get to the next day as soon as possible and forget all my troubles. I would wake up not wanting to face the looming mountain ahead of me. I would leave my crowded work place, my crowded church, my crowded friend's living room and find some isolated spot--the bathroom, the porch, the parking lot--place my head in my hands, and tremble until the sorrow that had built up inside finally subsided. I would be driving down the highway when I felt like I had suddenly driven off the side of a bridge and slammed into the frigid arms of the Schuylkill River, and pain and regret swallowed me into blackness.

I would shake my head quickly, like I was trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch, and found myself saying, every time:

I hate my life.

Those four words became more than catchphrase or a cute joke. They became my truth, my reality, the pen recording my past, the cell mate of my present, and the gatekeeper to my future.

I began to believe them--I really did hate my life. It didn't matter what good was happening. It didn't matter how successful I was. It didn't matter that I had friends who loved me. I hated my life--what power words can have to bury us in the dirt. What started as a joke began to shape itself into reality. I believed those words now. I lived in them. They clung to me like cold, wet clothing, and the more I said them, the more they stuck to my skin.

Sometimes, words may be the only key to unlock the chains other words have placed on us.

I fell under the dark enchantment of "I hate my life" for months before I began to snap out of the spell. Then I received an email from someone who had the power to make my chains heavier or to set me free. Here's what she wrote to me (edited to protect some of the more personal details):

This is what I want you to know--it gets better. One day at a time, you will make it through this...There's no quick fix to this. You're in shock. There's been a renting. Your life has been torn in two and no matter what happens now, you're not the same Paul you've always been. You will get back to being successful, but it's all going to look different, feel different because you're different.   

But that's the good news. When you're ready, you have the opportunity to build bigger dreams than the ones you've had--dreams you didn't know were possible before, dreams as big as the sky. I believe in you.

Winters like the one we've had this year on the east coast--this frigid, never-ending winter--remind me of the startling difference between having the sunlight fall on my face versus being under the shadow of clouds instead. It's the difference between treacherous ice and smooth paths, bone-deep chills and spirit-lifting warmth.

Those words thawed me out and brought me into a spring I desperately needed. They gave me a glimmer of green when the gray crept up to whisper death and despair. I didn't let go of them. I held them close. I let my heart slowly pump them out to every part of my ailing body until even my fingertips and my toes felt warm with them.

I will get better.

I will be okay.

I can build bigger dreams than the ones that have died.

I can dream dreams I didn't even dare to think about before.

I used to be buried alive, but I could feel the sun again. Now, when I lie down in bed, I want to stay up and dream. When I wake up, I can't wait for where the climb might take me that day. Slowly but surely, I've worked the old phrase out of my system and replaced it with one I intend to keep until I've sucked in my last breath:

I love my life.

***

Friends, let's bring life and hope and spring and warmth with our words. To others and to ourselves. And let's do it more often, yeah? It could be the difference between life and death. Thanks to all of you who have been committed to speaking life to me--I'm more grateful than you can know.

For my English teacher, Mrs. Nonnenberg.

I came home from Honduras and spent days catching up on all the news and happenings during my time away. There was Penn State news, Olympics news, Colorado news, work news, family news, and Perry the pug news. One piece of news, however, flew under the radar until a friend mentioned it to me this past weekend. It turned out to be, for me, the biggest news of everything I had missed. On July 25, 2012, Carolyn Nonnenberg passed away at the age of 69. Carolyn Nonnenberg was my English teacher in 9th grade. I, like everyone else, have a hall of teachers who stick in my memory: a crotchety teacher who liked to discipline me with a ruler, a teacher who let us have a dachshund as a class pet, a teacher who denied me the right to learn an instrument, a teacher whose class mascot Marcus the Frog (stuffed mascot) we hanged from the ceiling, a teacher we learned we could bring to tears with our terrible behavior, a teacher who got me to actually like math and science, a teacher who helped me get a job, and on and on. Mrs. Nonnenberg will always be more than just another face in that long hall of past teachers. She is one of the few that has shaped the course of my life.

I remember the first day of class with Mrs. Nonnenberg. I was a tiny, wiry freshman with a large JanSport backpack and a healthy fear of high school. The business-like approach of my giant history teacher and my computer apps teacher's terrifying resemblance to a living skeleton had me thinking that all my expectations of high school were true--and maybe worse. I plopped myself down in a seat in Mrs. Nonnenberg's English class, timidly awaiting another 45 minutes of painful high school indoctrination.

And like a window shade flapping open to allow an avalanche of sun to bathe a dark and dusty room in golden light, Mrs. Nonnenberg welcomed us to Honors English. She swung and craned her arms and let her voice sail and sink as she explained to us that she loved to teach and loved English. That day, I knew that I would love English as well.

Mrs. Nonnenberg had a touch of an endearing raspiness to her voice, which I can only assume was from years of booming her voice enthusiastically over generations of goofy 9th graders. She used that voice to cheer for me and encourage me to develop my art and my music. She used that voice to scold me when I wasn't focused. She used that voice to drive me to do better when she knew I hadn't given my best.

She allowed me to choose a book for my book report that would become one of my all-time favorites--Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I dressed up as Frodo when I presented my novel (which involved tussling my hair, going barefoot, and shoving a pillow in my shirt), and I literally covered my ears as tight as I could when two of my classmates presented The Two Towers and The Return of the King because I desperately didn't want the ending spoiled for me.

She made us memorize and recite a passage from Romeo and Juliet. (Eleven years later, I would make my 9th grade Honors English class do the same.)

She taught me how to be enthusiastic for life, for literature, for poetry, for art, for English, because she lived it each day in front of me.

When I explain to my students that I love to teach and that I love English and that I love life, it is her lilting, raspy voice I hear in my head as I echo her.

Carolyn Nonnenberg is the reason I am an English teacher. She is the reason I am an artist. She is the reason I am a writer. She is the reason I love what I do.

And I will forever be grateful to her for that.