Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The other day I watched “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” with my family. The entire time, they kept asking questions or making predictions and trying to understand what was going on, but everything they said seemed to come from a literal place. Their calculations seemed to me less introspective and reflective and more hard-fact based, looking for the rational and tangible instead of delving into the world of unexplainable emotion. I do not fault them for this. They are much more math and science oriented for me. They are good at ‘solving’ problems and finding solutions. They have strengths I do not have, and I am thankful that they are part of my family. I benefit from their perspectives.

Nonetheless, if you have seen the movie, you know it is about a child with extreme anxiety, depression, and confusion. The mother, as well, is suffering from depression. And the movie is not meant to be analyzed empirically. Rather, I believe it is meant to call us downward, into the realm of deep, inexplicable emotion, fear, and the range of human experience in handling such things. Reading deeply into the scenes of the film, the film’s imagery, the artistic features that are seeking to speak to us of life’s experience, and the language so skillfully developed is not something that necessarily comes natural all people. Many people are blessed with minds that work much more empirically than mine, but as I watched this movie, I felt I was enabled to immediately look past the obvious and into the depths of message, depths that were not as blatantly observable. And as I thought upon the differences of our experiences of the film, I realized one of the reasons I was afforded the ability to connect with the film in such a way.

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that we comfort others with the comfort with which Christ has comforted us. I have often been plagued by the inability to cease being reflective, to stop analyzing my emotions and feelings and perceptions so incredibly intensely. I am one completely unable to set aside such feelings and compartmentalize. I envy that trait in others more than you may know. Also, I have, in my relatively short life, had the ‘privilege’ of traveling through experiences of such complete lowness that I know what it is like to desire to die or to fear even moving from my position on a couch or a chair, to fear walking into public, to fear almost everything. I have been terrified of people and terrified of memories. I have witnessed debilitating anxiety and debilitating depression. I have sensed the shame and confusion that come when I’ve tried to explain my experiences. I’ve witnessed other’s judgments and accusations about why it is that I HAVE experienced such lows. I have seen people find me unfit because of my experience and travels through the labyrinth abysses which make up the human experience, abysses created by evil, death, suffering, and sin. I have known what it is like to feel completely and utterly alone, as if no one could simply listen and respect my words and feelings without needing me to  justify and defend the validity of my own human experience.

Yet, perhaps because of such experience, I am able to look upon other sufferers or those who are acting in inexplicable ways, and I am able not to judge them but to watch them, listen to them, see them, and learn from them. Perhaps because of all of this, I am afforded a grace from God to see with eyes and hear with ears like His. Maybe, just maybe, my own experience has given me the ability to look at the world a little more like He does…maybe. Maybe there is use for a person like me, with all my flaws and emotional upheavals, with all my inabilities to compartmentalize and judge empirically. If this is true, then most certainly any pain or suffering or trauma I have undergone or will undergo in the future is extremely worth it.

This thing I know: In my call to be a disciple of Christ, I never felt a specific leading toward only preaching or only singing or only working in children’s ministry. I did, and do, however, experience the call to allow God to make me and weld me into His complete disciple….to crush me in order that the wine may flow. I have known that God wants me to be more than the Christian who experiences life at sea level. Rather, He’s asked me to be willing to let Him take me to the depths, to where the icebergs of life begin, and inspect how such icebergs form, understand their formation, and not try only to minister to them based on the observable tip that rises above the water.

I have known God has called me to be a person that can help debride wounds so that they do not heal with a top layer of skin while decaying underneath. I’ve even had literal physical wounds that I have had to allow doctors to debride as I winced in pain with tears. Without such efforts, however, infection would have festered under the surface, and I would have had to go through life crippled. In this case, the painful debriding process healed me. I believe too many times, ministry efforts are approached in a way that aims at taking care of the surface, however. We Christians try to treat the exterior, the façade, with ointment and a Band-Aid, but underneath are infections and bacteria that are not  healing and that can only be taken out with a doctor’s scalpel.

So as I watched this film and as it was easy for me to identify, or at least respect, the inexplicable actions of those who were suffering, I was quite convinced that this capability of mine was gained only because of what God had allowed me to experience and how He had broken me down and humbled me, (and how he continues to break me down and humble me).

You see, we are all much less strong than we think. The problem is that many of us live on the surface and are never forced to face the weakness underneath and inside of ourselves. In fact, we usually WANT to live on the surface. We believe it hurts less, and in the moment, it does…but what about forever?

I suppose I will continue welcoming the circumstances through which God strains me to confront the underneath…strains me to deal with the roots…and all the while creates me, perhaps making me into a person who walks hand in hand with the Man of Sorrows and is pointed to view the world and its people from that Man’s perspective.