Letters from the Valley of Suck Three Years In

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Three years.

It has been three years today that cancer did its finally work in Heather’s body and took her from the physical world. Three years since that day that our family was rearranged. Three years since I came up against the wall of mortality in the most personal way and profound way I could have imagined. Three years since I lost the life we had been building.

I am learning that the tighter I try to hold onto things, the more anxious and fearful I grow. The more I try to control outcomes, the more fearful of tomorrow I become. The more I try to figure things out, the less I really feel like I understand.

Jesus talks so well about our need to die, comparing that need to a grain of wheat that must die for it yield a rich harvest (John 12:23-27). And it is so well interpreted that this is related to the “born-again” experience, we never think to ask if it is repeatable and what it may mean to us if and when it is repeated in our lives?

When I gave my life to Jesus at 17, I died. In many other experiences, parts of me “died” but at no point did my life die the way it did three years ago on the night of June 12th.

The valley of suck has provided fertile ground because it is littered with death, the death of lives, dreams, hopes, visions, failures, joys, struggle, and so much more. The valley of suck is all about change - the change forced on the unsuspecting because of morality and grief. And as one author puts it, “what the ego hates more than anything else in the world is to change. Letting go is not in anybody’s program for happiness, and yet all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning.” (“Breathing Under Water,” Richard Rohr)

I call it the valley of suck and it has been my road to changing. My hope and prayer is that the narrow road has me more like Jesus than when it began. In the end, if I find myself where he says I should be, I should look more like he did...and I suspect that means crucified, too.