I was recently reminded of this. It happened nearly 16 years ago. I have changed much over those years but I still have a quiet certainty that I am never alone.
October 6, 2008
This is one of those times. It is a dark night of the soul. It is a piling of too many things to mention and a temporary sense of hopelessness that there is any better moment to come, ever.
Last night I lay in bed awake hour after hour, waiting for a sun I was almost sure would never rise. In these moments there is so totally nothing to be done and it feels like the muscle, bones and sinew are pushing to blast free from the skin and there is NOTHING to do about it.
So I began to pray. I am not a complicated prayer. But nights like last night cause me to wane in even my own typical non-complexity.
I simply prayed (exact quote…no embellishment here) “God, please just let me know that I am not alone.” That was it. Over and over and over again. Maybe for an hour, maybe more. It was almost trance-like at times.
Eventually, I was too exhausted to even speak and the sun did rise and the new day did begin. I made my coffee, went to work and began the hectic schedule that is my every day as the clinical director of a treatment center. Then about halfway through a clinical supervision session, my assistant knocked on my door and said “John, Carol needs you to call her right away. She says there is a patient you need to see.” Carol was a former clinical director who was spending time with me at the center and acting as a mentor for me.
My assistant would not have interrupted me if it were not important, so I called Carol and she informed me that a former patient had come to see me completely unexpectedly and he was waiting for me in the chapel. He apparently drove in from across the state and was on his way to Miami for business.
When I arrived at the chapel, he was kneeling in a corner praying silently and I walked in and I sat down and I waited for him. I did not recognize him from behind. But when he stood and turned and his almost glowing face looked at me, I realized that it was S., a man who’s chaplain I had been when he was in chemical dependency treatment nearly three years earlier. He looked amazing. I immediately remembered that he spent many many hours in my office and walking the outdoor track and we had talked about grief and sorrow and prayer and forgiveness and finding God’s love and so many other things. But today, he wanted to tell me something very specific.
“I think about you a lot, John, and I carry many things in my heart still. But, of all the things I remember about our times together, the most is the thing that happened on the ROPES course.” This was a full day obstacle course that involved many challenges, including climbing vertical walls and navigating high in the treetops on narrow rope bridges.
“Do you remember what happened with me that day, John?”
I did. The last obstacle of the day involved climbing up a telephone pole, standing on the very top, and then jumping off with only an angled rope being held by your peers to make you fall away from the pole and to keep you from hitting the ground. All of the peers on the ground cheer the climber on and encourage him to trust. It is about a leap of faith.
S Continued, “I had finally climbed to the top of that telephone pole, and I was standing on top and there were all of those guys yelling for me to jump and trust the harness and saying that I would be okay. And over it all, I only heard your quiet voice when you said calmly and almost under your breath, ‘You are not alone.’ I was all the way up on the pole and you were all the way down on the ground amidst a bunch of other loud voices. There is no way I should have heard you but that was all I could hear at all, your voice saying to me ‘You’re not alone’. I know that it was really God speaking through you to me to tell me that I am not alone. I am never alone.”
I have had not seen this man in three years. There was no practical or logical reason for this encounter today. He told me he had made this drive many times but this time he simply felt compelled to come by here to see me.
I must believe that I have been whispered to by God Himself.
May His whisper be all that I can hear.
Like Walking Trees 