Coping Mechanisms

We’ve just left Margaret at the airport, fed and hugged, and with a drowsified baby, to make her way home.  It has been a gift to have her.  The love that drew her and James to come and visit is like a miracle to me.  It is, to me another reason to believe that things will be okay, that life will continue on, and though there may be pain , joy will follow.

I’ve been conversing with James and Margaret this weekend about our different world views, about their worry that my propensity (necessity) to see good in the midst of pain, and to look forward unfailingly to the brightness and goodness that will come, despite the darkness of what is now, is deluded, and fails to take into account the reality of that evil, and pain and darkness.  I think they see masochism in my assertions that I can be grateful for the experiences that hurt me, and blindness in my belief that there is nothing so bad that good cannot come of it.

It has been a bit distressing to me to hear what they have to say.  Not because I don’t believe in the reality of evil, but because I believe in it so much, and feel its darkness so much that it threatens to consume me if I don’t also believe that it can be overcome. 

In the book “The Secret Life of Bees” is a character who seems to feel evil similarly to me.  She is mentally/emotionally troubled (perhaps I am, too?) and feels so keenly the reality of the suffering and sorrow and darkness of the world that she is constantly on the brink of being overwhelmed by it.  Her sisters, with whom she lives, don’t tell her the news, when it is bad, because her mourning is so intense that it upsets the order of the house.  She loves deeply, and takes exceptional joy in the beauty of the world, but it is not enough to keep her from suffering for every sufferer. 

At one point, one of their dear friends is beaten and thrown in jail.  The news is supposed to be kept from her, but she finds out somehow.  It is too much.  The connection is too close, and the pain too real.  She writes a note to her sisters telling them she loves them, and that the world is simply too much for her, and she drowns herself. 

I understand how she feels.  I don’t understand myself fully, to know if the poignancy of my feelings is due to mental imbalance or spiritual sensitivity (or both?) but I feel the evil, the pain, the wrongness of this fallen world so much that sometimes it threatens to overwhelm me.  Escape seems like the only option, because the darkness and sadness is more than I know how to deal with. As I have written before, while never suicidal, per se, I have fantasized about death as a way to escape the darkness of the world often.  I look forward to it, especially when I am in a state I would describe as “depressed.” 

It is my understanding of and belief in the atonement that has saved me.  It is the understanding that all can be made right.  That my dear children, whose tender feelings I have hurt, and whose minds I have doubtless warped in my imperfections can be made whole that makes it okay to go on, and not leave them in an attempt to save them from any more of the pain I would cause.  The atonement allows me to look on evil, and darkness, sorrow and sin and horror and pain and everything that is inherently part of this world, and not give up.  Because I have to believe that nothing in this world—none of that bad things that happen by the billions every day cannot be healed.  I have to believe that God, our father who loves us would not put us in a situation where we will be irreparably damaged, hurt, and such, without giving us a way also to be healed, and made whole and happy.  If I thought evil would win in the end, and was inescapable as well as unavoidable, I think I would rather just cease to exist. But I believe through the atonement we can escape (or overcome) the unavoidable pain--we can be made whole, again.