On the Verge of Cynicism

I was reading two days ago when I picked up my sticky notes to make a side note. I noticed some scribbling on the second pad, written almost unintelligibly, so I put my pen down [as if it had anything to do with me seeing better😅] to try to figure out what had been scribbled. It read, ‘where did my love go?’ I had absolutely no recollection of why or when, but I could tell without doubt that I wrote it. I didn’t see it happen but the words swallowed me into an unending black-hole of unpleasant experiences I’d had in the past few years. I don’t know how long I sat there staring blankly at the white wall in my room but two things were clear by the time I yanked myself out of my thoughts: 1) that I was on the verge of becoming a cynic [definitely hitting close to half the score]; 2) I was far less happier and loving than I used to be.

Life does something to you. It begins to make very little sense of everything you’ve known when something avoidable but unexplainable happens to you. Someone you love dies painfully, after you’ve fasted and prayed your intestines and throat out for months. Someone sexually mishandles you, and all of a sudden you lose the sense of safety and identity you used to walk about with so lightly. You’re attacked first-hand by robbers on a regular night after you’ve prayed fervently for protection for the night and trusted God to keep you safe. I’m not making up these scenarios; they are events I have either experienced or had to hold a friend’s hand through within the last 2years.

Have you seen a child’s joy? It’s unadulterated; it’s pure. She’s yet to understand emotional pain and injustice; yet to feel completely misunderstood and misjudged and unwanted. His brain is yet to register hopelessness and disappointment. When she’s upset, it’s but for that moment because none of the experiences that made her cry have changed her universal perception of who others are or how life generally is. A cynic’s heart, which is now the exact opposite of a child’s, has been taken hostage by an aggregate of disappointment and pain. I read somewhere, that:

‘Cynics are cornered sufferers who have turned their shields into blunt swords’.

They cut because they themselves bleed. Today’s piece isn’t for everyone. It is for the one who’s hurt by life’s experiences and God’s seeming silence. It’s for the one who’s both disappointed and confused and yet to fully understand how tough their lives could get in the midst of how faithful they have remained. It is for you, strong fellow, who cannot find comfort anywhere because nobody quite understands that the same way your strength stands when you have it is the same way your pain cuts when you feel it.

God’s silence was not to put you down. It was not a cue to you to question everything you’ve ever known as truth. It was not to make a cynic out of you, or to make you a pessimist, bitter and joyless – nothing like the childlike joy you once carried. Jesus went in deep anguish in a garden called Gethsemane [Luke 22:42-44]. He volunteered to walk this path, but He was in deep anguish. He groaned in agony until his sweat fell like droplets of blood. Yet all the while He prayed, the Father was silent. Three times, He asked the Father He had always known so intimately the same thing. Three times, the Father was silent. The only thing that makes the difference between you and Jesus that kept Jesus from cynicism was:

that Jesus was certain that His pain had purpose, that God’s silence when He needed Him most was not abandonment, because all anyone else looking from outside Jesus’ pain that night would have seen was angels ministering strength onto Him.

Here’s not what I’m saying: that you should dismiss your pain merely because it has purpose. Or that God was the mastermind behind those experiences. Here’s what I’m saying: The blueprint of who you are, how you think, has changed drastically because of the hurt you have experienced. It has subconsciously distorted your understanding of what a faithful God means to you. It may have sabotaged your entire outlook on life, and affected how much of God’s word you actually believe now. It may have turned your heart into a sea of bitter waters that ruin every opportunity of joy that may come your way.

What that hurt requires of you, of me, is to re-learn what trusting God looks like. It requires that we redefine what peace looks like – like coming to terms with the reality of the things that caused the hurt and realizing that:

a silent God does not equate an absent God.

Love,

RAD!💖