By Susan K. Smith,
There are things that we just do not want to see or acknowledge, as if refusing to see or acknowledge those things will make them go away. I have heard too many people say that they felt like maybe their son or daughter was acting different, and that something might be wrong, but that they really didn’t want to know! A mother came to me once and shared that she wondered if her daughter was doing drugs, but that she was afraid to ask. Another person said that he had been feeling bad for a while but chalked it up to being tired. He ended up in a hospital getting triple bypass surgery.
We do not want to see things or acknowledge things that seem too big for us to handle, or which are too painful to consider being true because we just do not want to deal with it, to take responsibility for taking action that may or may not be successful. When my son began to smoke, I wanted to just wither and die. Both my parents and a sister died from cancer. All through their lives, I told my children how bad smoking was, and I thought they got it…then I saw a package of cigarettes in my son’s car.
I was so angry I wanted to take the pack and throw them in the toilet. Then I wanted to confront my son and tell him how dumb it was (and how insulting it was to the way I had raised him) to smoke. I did neither; I knew that either action would not have a good outcome. So, I mentioned to him that I had seen the cigarettes and that my first impulse had been to throw them out but that I understood that he was grown. His life was his own.
That experience is minor compared to conversations I have had with parents who are worried that a child of theirs is on drugs, or engaged in some activity which is not legal or which goes against their moral and religious beliefs. “I think something is wrong but I just can’t deal with it,” I have had parents say to me.
What I have learned is that not facing what we must does not make that “thing” go away. Putting ourselves in a zone of denial does not force an outcome which is pleasing to us. Some of us do not want to acknowledge that we are getting old, some do not want to acknowledge that the cough or fatigue they’ve been having seems abnormal. Some of us do not want to acknowledge that a person in whom we have invested much time and love is not giving anything back and may in fact be toxic to our own spirits. Not facing what we must just puts us deep into the darkness that denial always produces.
The long-term effect of denial is a deep spiritual pain which we bring on ourselves. Facing what we must causes us some pain initially, but it is liberating after a while to have faced it and its consequences …and moved on. Facing what we must is like squeezing pus out of a pimple. Our souls are covered with pimples filled with poisons caused by the things we would just rather not deal with. Facing what we must forces the poison out.
Iyanla Vanzant shared a poem that her now-deceased daughter, Gemmia, once wrote, the title of which she gave to one of her first books, One Day My Soul Just Opened Up. It can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but for those of us who refuse to face the things we must, it has a strong message. The poem:
One day my soul just opened up
And things started happenin’
Things I can’t quite explain,
I mean,
I cried and cried like never before
I cried tears of ten thousand mothers
I couldn’t even feel anything ‘cause
I cried ‘til I was numb.
One day my soul just opened up
I felt this overwhelming pride
What I was proud of
Only God knows!
Like the pride of a hundred thousand fathers
Basking in the glory of their newborn sons
I was grinnin’ from ear to ear!
One day my soul just opened up
I started laughing
And I laughed for what seemed like forever
Wasn’t nothin’ particularly funny goin’ on
But I laughed anyhow
I laughed the joy of a million children playin’
In the mud
I laughed ‘til my sides ached
Oh ,God! It felt so good!
One day my soul just opened up
There were revelations, annihilations, and resolutions
Feelings of doubt and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness
Memories of things I’d seen and done before
Of places I’d been, although I didn’t know when
There were lives I’d lived
People I’d loved
Battles I’d fought
Victories I’d won
And wars I’d lost.
One day, my soul just opened up
And out poured all the things
I’d been hiding
And denying
And living through
That had just happened moments before.
One day, my soul just opened up
And I decided
I was good and ready!
Good and ready!
To surrender
My life
To God.
So, with my soul wide open,
I sat down
Wrote her a note
And told her so.
If we face what we must, our souls might very well open as well, and only God knows how our lives will bend toward the presence of the God who desires that we thrive in this life, and not walk blindly, not giving our spirits an opportunity to be truly free.
Amen and amen.
Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith –Writer, author, musician, pastor, preacher and social justice advocate. She is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and author of “Crazy Faith: Ordinary People; Extraordinary Lives,” which won the 2009 National Best Books Award. Follow Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith on Twitter:www.twitter.com/cassad
