My Spiritual Rock Bottom
There was a time when God felt so far from me, so unapproachable, so shrouded in a fog of conflicting memories, that I wondered if I’d ever see him again. This is that story.
I remember my spiritual rock bottom. It wasn’t dramatic per se; it was quietly profound.
It was a Sunday morning and I had gone to church. Even though it was hard for me to stomach church because of the feeling of defeat it evoked, there was one place I could go that didn’t trigger me. And the reason I could go there was anonymity—I didn’t have to talk to one soul; no one knew me. It was far from my home, down in Hollywood, about 30-minutes away. And the church turned the lights down real low. So low that no one could see me—and I could see no one. For two 30-minute sessions of singing, only rope lights illuminated the aisles. Even the band was in the dark. The only thing that shone was the lyrics on a giant screen.
Recently one of my sons had gone to prison and I’d written him a letter that was too emotional, too revealing, and too specific. It was a combination of me trying to connect with him and me trying to work out my own troubling feelings. But it was misguided. It was unwise. It was so specific that the District Attorney seized it to use against him. I was aghast and embarrassed and panicky that I’d done such a stupid thing. I felt like George Bailey when he was on that bridge, chewing his knuckles, his stomach in knots, at the end of his rope, contemplating jumping off into the icy waters below. How could I have been so recklessly candid?
On this particular Sunday, the preacher offered the congregation a chance to pray with someone on the side of the auditorium after his sermon, something I'd normally shy away from. But this day I was desperate. So I walked over to the side during a song, my stomach churning, my breath sour, my hands clammy, to ask a guy I’d never met, Nathaniel, to pray for me. Pray my letter will never see the light of a courtroom, I asked. Pray for my son. And pray for me as a dad, that I can find my way.
Nathaniel didn’t know I’d been a Christian for 40 years. He didn’t know that I used to be a pastor of a church. He didn’t know that I’d tried to raise my family right. He didn’t know that I could barely open my Bible anymore without a flood of bad memories overwhelming me. He didn’t know I could barely mouth a prayer anymore.
He only saw a grey-bearded, sputtering, shaking, humbled man. And that’s what I was. This was the lowest I ever felt spiritually.
Returning to my seat, the band started to play a song I knew and it stirred something deep within me, something primal, something reminiscent. Then a lyric flashed onto the screen that I recognized. It was an affirmation, a phrase I believed, a statement I agreed with. I think it was “God is my refuge…” or maybe “I am who you say I am…” The exact words escape me now, but I remember it was something I could glom onto, one I could embrace in the absence of feeling it myself. The lyric felt like a hand was being extended to me from above, a hand I could hold onto and borrow its strength and use it to pull myself up. So I grabbed ahold of that hand, relaxed into its simple truth, and made it mine.
After a few minutes of singing, my cynical self quieted down, my feelings of defeat ebbed away, and those lyrics infused me.
But it wasn’t until my car ride home, buzzing up the 101, the passing scenery calming my mind, that I began to feel a slight shift within me—a lightness I hadn't felt in years. It was a lightness that felt a little bit like hope. But honestly, it was too soon for hope. I think it was hope that there might be hope. I think it was the first whispers that maybe, just maybe, I could be normal with God again.
That day was my bottom. From then on, and for the past eight years, hope has been building in my heart.
My bottom taught me that God doesn’t care what you used to be, or how awesome your life is, or how stellar your family is, or the model Christian you are, or how precisely you know your Bible, or how diligently you pray. He cares about the oddest thing of all: how broken you are. Yes, broken. He wants a broken spirit and a broken heart, so he can revive them both.
Well, I’ve been to that school of brokenness. Maybe you have too. And, you know, I may be enrolled again one day. But it was in that school where I learned what nakedness feels like, and what an outstretched hand feels like, and how sometimes that hand is human with flesh and fingers, and how sometimes that hand is straight from heaven, through a song, in a very dark auditorium, when you are feeling no hope.
And no, in case you are wondering, that letter to my son never saw the light of the courtroom. I was spared.
And yes, I wrote my son, Lucas, many more letters after that. They helped us become a father and son again. They helped him find God in that God-forsaken prison. And in the process of helping him, and by grabbing that hand from heaven, I, too, found God again.
That’s beautiful!