The lost art of unravelling a self

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”

– Haldir, The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)

If you’d built a time machine, travelled through time, and told my past self about all the things that would happen to me in the next twelve months, I’m pretty sure I would have sold everything and moved to Hawaii.

I can’t find trouble if trouble can’t find me, right?

Wrong.

It’s always easy, standing on the mountaintops of our life, to forget how difficult it is in the valleys. It often seems like the human mind has a highly selective amnesia that veils all the shadowy places like a low-lying fog, helping us to forget our miseries as soon as we climb back into the warmth of the sun again.

What a blessed mercy that is, too – that for many of us, the sunny places are frequent enough for us to forget the brief patches of darkness.

Without this ability to forget the valley once we ascend the mountain, I believe more of us would succumb to despair – which I define as the belief that there are no more mountaintops to be had in our lives. Certainly, we wouldn’t be able to forgive or forget nearly as well as we do.

But what is to be done in the middle of suffering that seems to have no end?

Only twelve months ago, I believed I had all the makings of a good life, neatly assembled and measured out like ingredients at the beginning of a cooking show. I’d known trials, yes – I nearly died in 2014, midway through my Honours year at university, only months after getting married to the love of my life. I’d lost loved ones, including a cousin who was as a brother to me and a faithful – and hilarious – long-distance correspondent throughout our childhood years. I’d even struggled with bouts of depression at times, like a recurring flu.

But I’d overcome all of it. I recovered from emergency surgery in 2014, my life given back to me by the skilful hands of one of the best surgeons in the Southern Hemisphere – curiously based less than a kilometre from where I’d moved with my new husband only months before. By 2016, I’d finally finished a lifetime’s worth of study to begin my career as a psychologist – a start not without many stalls and painful lessons, but numerous rewards, too.

I’d married a wonderful man, whose defining quality was faithfulness. If I lived a hundred lives of Mother Teresa’s calibre, I’d never be worthy of the gentle, forgiving nature of this man.

By 2018, I knew I was where I wanted to be. God was using me: my gifts, my talent, my passions.

And then came the unravelling.

In early 2018, I experienced a medical episode during a session with a client. Believing it to be a one-off, I cancelled the rest of my day, took myself off to the hospital, and spent the weekend trying to recover. Over the next few months, I experienced lingering neurological symptoms, but medical investigations declared everything normal. And then, about eight months after the initial episode, I had two more episodes, a day apart. My symptoms went from some days to every day.

Piece by piece, little parts of my life were chipped away. As unwell as I was, I couldn’t return to work, although I did try at first, several times. I went from doing hours of face-to-face, intense sessions every day to wondering how I was going to manage the short drive to see my doctor for the results of the latest tests and scans. Specialists were (mostly) compassionate, but baffled.

Horace Walpole once said: “The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel”. My whole life, I’ve prided myself on being both a thinker and a feeler, but in the valley, there is certainly nothing to do but feel.

This particular stretch of darkness felt longer than any other. Where was the approaching mountaintop? Where was the sunshine that I’d basked in all my life, broken only occasionally by patches of rain and thunder?

Where was the fruit of long-suffering – the happy conclusion to my story? And why had God stripped away so much good – so much fruit – in my life, only to replace it with nothingness?

And that was when I realised.

I’d lived my life for fruit.

It was a book that finally brought me to my knees. A beautiful, bewitching, entirely unassuming book: “A Rumored Fortune” by Joanna Davidson Politano. I’m a sucker for historical fiction, and a romantic at heart. Like many avid readers, I read for good plots, strong characters, and happy endings. The book delivers all of that (and more), but it was the book’s extended metaphor, based on Jesus’ beautiful words about the vine and the branches in the Gospel of John (15:1-17) that unravelled me. I’ve posted a excerpt from it here:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful…

Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

While I’d read this passage many times before, I’d never stopped to consider the gruesome reality of the pruning. How painful it would be to have those beautiful parts of my life - the parts I'd lovingly tended - clipped away. To see perfectly good grapes and foliage lying on the ground, wasting away.

Why would God do such a wasteful thing?

Politano writes: “Pruning involves difficult decisions. It’s about removing growth, even what is good and beautiful, to attain something far better.”

Just what is that ‘better’? Maybe good things really do fall apart so that better things can fall together, as the Marilyn Monroe saying goes. Or as Samwise Gamgee’s father says in The Lord of the Rings: “All’s well that ends better”.

Indeed, there have been many surprising blessings along the road of this suffering. In December 2018, taking advantage of my “good days”, I finished the novel – my magnum opus – that I’d been working on for nearly thirteen years, and recently submitted it for publication.

I’ve found a wealth of joy and contentment in my friendships, rediscovering the beauty of older connections and forging rich new ones; to extend the vineyard metaphor, my “guide wires” that not only support me but also steer me in better directions. I’ve grown closer to my dear husband, my faithful best friend, through trials that have only strengthened and refined our bond. I’ve discovered that I am so much more than what I do, or achieve, or accomplish – and to quiet my fears, I have only to be still (Psalm 46:10).

Even when stillness feels like stagnancy.

But I don’t believe that the promise of greater fruit is all the ‘better’ that God wants to accomplish by His pruning. Chronic illness has stolen many of the things I thought made me me – the helper, the busy person, the lifesaver and the rescuer – but in exchange, I’ve gained something far more valuable. Not a reliance on myself – I always was self-reliant to a fault – but on God. As Politano so aptly describes it: “taking away what’s good so you seek out something better” [my emphasis].

Politano’s novel was a beautiful reminder that in the midst of all this pain, all I need to do is “hold on”. Not to the things in my life, which are never certain, nor even to other branches, but to the True Vine – the only One who can see the future, and the One who knows the intimate details of our lives. As Charles Spurgeon said: “God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.” To hold to the True Vine means trusting the Vintner’s heart when I do not understand the work of His hands.

"What is to give light must endure burning."

- Viktor Frankl

While we need to hold on in times of trial, I believe that we also need to press on. The great stories of the Bible are a vivid reminder that to follow Christ is not to live for - or even hang on until - the next hill, as many of us do, but to learn how to persevere in the valleys. I think of Hannah, who waited years for an end to the anguish of infertility, or Joseph, who was subjected to brutal treatment from his brothers and then the lies from his employer's wife that saw him unjustly thrown into prison. Job, who lost nearly everything - wealth, livelihood, children, and finally his own health. Abraham and Sarah, Daniel, Jacob...the list goes on.

Ultimately, we have Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood as he grappled with what was about to come next and submitted himself to God's plan, even knowing it meant his death (Luke 22:39-46).

The Bible is full of men and women who spent years of their lives in valleys, just waiting. Luckily for us, we have the view from the mountaintop to see their suffering as part of God's intricate plan - and not just His plan for them, but for the rest of humanity. We get to hear the end of the story - how Jacob finally married his great love, Rachel, after being tricked by her father, or how Hannah was blessed by a son, Samuel, or how Joseph was able to save his family because of the very trials they'd subjected him to. We have those astonishing words from Joseph as his brothers throw themselves at his feet and seek his forgiveness for their wrongdoing: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good..." (Genesis 50:20).

And we have Jesus, who endured the most painful and shameful of deaths, only to rise again on the third day in victory.

God's power is made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9). If we live our lives for the mountaintops - always wishing for good things rather than bad or hard ones - we miss out on what God can accomplish in the valleys. Sometimes, we only see God's plan once we climb the next mountain. Perhaps, for some trials, the most we can acknowledge is that God does have a plan, and we are the humble branch that produces a beautiful wine, the jars of clay through which God shows His glory (2 Corinthians 4:7-9).

I’m writing this in present tense, because I’m still in the valley.

Despite the little glimpses of the work being done by the Author of my life, I still cannot see the trace of God’s hand in its entirety. There’s no firm diagnosis in sight, nor a fixed treatment, nor an endpoint to this illness. Specialists are still baffled. At the tender age of twenty-seven, I’ve somehow accumulated more ailments than bugs on a windshield after a road trip out west.

But then, maybe that’s for the best – because I doubt I’d be writing this, or feeling this, on the mountaintop. And I’ve come to realise that I’m no longer walking through that valley alone, but with the Author of the universe beside me (Psalm 23:4). The very One who braved that valley alone to bring me to the green pasture, bountiful table, and refreshing waters of the life beyond.