Six years ago today, I held Daddy's hand as he passed beyond the veil. Four days later I played this song at his funeral. It's a song I remember him listening to and associate with him: the sweet joy it exudes, the humble and grateful heart of a man who tried so many years to outrun his shame, brokenness, emptiness, and finally began to face them when he faced Christ some 40 years ago.
My dad's healing did begin as a startling transformation but it really took years of diligent effort to yield in that once abandoned boy the secure attachment, restoration, and boundless generosity of a man who had been forgiven much. He made grace and peace look easier than it was: he just knew to always look to Christ. His sage, almost unnervingly laconic wisdom in times of strife was always, "Let it go." He wasn't saying to bury it, ignore it, or escape it, but to consciously and faithfully entrust it to the hands of our Savior. There is no other solution.
As I tried to suggest at the funeral, most people try the wrong things to fill the deep hole in their wounded souls. They turn to other people and even to the Church, hoping that in so doing they will find healing. What I see now is that healing is something you have to unflinchingly choose for yourself, without clutching to defenses against the shame we don't feel we entirely deserve (but still manage to blame ourselves for). And healing is not something another person can carry you through--even the best people can't bear that responsibility: have you ever tried taking a splinter out of an uncooperative child's finger? And simply trying to assume an idealized lifestyle in the Church won't do it either--the Church can only point out our problem and bind up the wounds that we surrender to Her. When the attempts to outrun or outsource healing fail, tragically people tend to react to their attempted saviors in bitterness and try even harder to escape in ways that lead to even more shame and self-destruction. Dad would talk about these people he knew with such tenderness, empathy, and quiet hope by saying, "He's running." "She's running." Healing will come when we are tired of getting sucked further into the hole, when we stop trying to outrun it, face our pain, tell the truth without defenses, and ask for mercy. It's a slow, painful, and humiliating process. But it's the only way out.
St. Seraphim of Sarov said, "Acquire a spirit of peace, and a thousand around you will be saved." That is my father's legacy.
Let Danny Douglas be an example. Face your brokenness, not to embrace it but to turn it over to God, and slowly, painstakingly, piece by piece, begin to let it go into His hands. Bite your lip, cry and tremble as you must, but remain submissive to His care as He takes the tweezers and plucks, digs out the splinters. It'll hurt, but not as much as leaving them there. This is the path to sainthood, and the peace you gain will save thousands around you.
I love you, Daddy, and I'm so glad that our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Please intercede for us all!
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