The Scary Depths

By Andrea Lingle

The Feast of All Saints is celebrated on the first day of November. It is a day that we remember. Today I am remembering Frederick Buechner. I never met him, but his wisdom and stories have stretched ideas like grace and God and love for me and countless others. Buechner died this year, leaving a goodly pile of words behind which I have been gratefully sorting through. In honor of All Saints Day, I would like to draw your attention to some of his words drawn from, A Crazy Holy Grace.

“It’s hard to share not just the shallows of your life, which is what we’re all so good at doing, but to speak out of the depths of your life—the depths are scary.” (Buechner, 31)

How are you? I imagine you are fine. No, really. Things have been easier, but overall, I imagine, you can’t complain.

We all say this. Honestly, it’s an unwritten rule that, when asked, we reply with fine. If someone really wanted to know that your back is out and the debt is dancing month to month and you had no idea that making decisions would be as hard as it is, they would have asked you when you were sitting down. Comfortably. Cuz this is going to take a minute.

So, we’re all fine.

But fine is such a thin word. It is a substitute. It is a postcard of sunflowers printed on cheap card stock: only capable of conjuring a wan smile.

“Pain is negation of everything that seems precious. But pain also is treasure.” (Buechner, 32)

I once lived on the outside of closed circles. A toothy, heavily-banged twigling who had no idea how to enter a ring of girls chatting about the movie they had all been to see or who would be at the football game on Friday. I would hover for a semi-moment, just the fraction of a second, behind their shoulders pressed together in an impermeable ring, and then fade back into myself. Truth be told, I doubt those girls had any idea that I wanted to stand in their company. I certainly never told them.

Thirty years have not smoothed away the razor-edge of my felt exclusion. It makes my voice catch to tell those stories, and it is why all my children can recite what the most important thing is in our home.

Everyone feels included.

There she stood right in the middle of the room—too much hair, shoulders slumped, her panicked eyes unable to find a place. She wielded her lunch tray like a shield as she scanned for a seat at the table. In the pressure of the moment, it was overwhelming. She could not see anywhere to sit. She began walking toward the outer edge of the room. Away from the tables. Alone and invisible would be better than exposed.

She heard a voice call her name, her eyes lit up, she grinned as her tray slapped down on the chipped formica table. I knew that voice. It was my kid. She knows my story. I had shown her my pain, and she used it to bring joy. There was a time when I did not belong, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I hadn’t shared the scary depths of my life. The amazing part is, I didn’t have to sit at the spinning wheel myself, turning the straw into gold, I brought the broken bits forward and was met with grace.

“If you bury your life—if you don’t face, among other things, your pain—your life shrinks. It is in a way diminished. It is in a way taken away.” (Buechner, 25)