I had been hungry all the years;
My noon had come, to dine;
I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine…

– Emily Dickinson

We all have our ways of dealing with situations we can’t handle.  This can involve anything from impulse buying to illicit relationships, from immersion in our obsessions to simple avoidance.  For me personally this pattern usually takes the shape of running.  The whole entire world can get sideways and everybody’s (rightly) mad at me and it’s all going to go down, but if I can just get 10 miles in, everything is okay again.  Or so I suppose.

That narrative is not always operative, however.  In my moments of clarity I can soberly admit to myself that while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value both for the present life and also for the life to come; or at times like today I simply wake up in the morning and feel like ick so I can’t go running, and process my problems by writing about them instead.

When I first became an officer in our church, the experience was a harrowing one.  I lost my job as a young executive in manufacturing, we were in the middle of an adoption process which my wife insisted (thanks be to God) on continuing, I lost 20 pounds from the effects of stress in the weeks thereafter, caught a bad lung infection and coughed up blood, and pretty much hated life for awhile.  In the midst of all this I was supposed to be ordained as an elder in our denomination, and there was not a little incredulity in my mind toward whatever crazy scheme God had for our family at the time.  Here I was being all pious and obedient, making sacrifices in my life and schedule to serve others, and it was rewarded with nothing but heartache.

This too passed, and with time I came to understand that suffering is a necessary part of leadership.  If you cannot identify with the pain of others you cannot give them any hope, and without hope who will follow you?  And it is only the leader who is willing not only to identify with the pain of others but also to take it upon him/herself who will truly be able to show the example of Jesus.

All this is well and good.  I get it, everybody gets that I get it, and I’m ready to get on with it.  But that’s where things got complicated.  I have been faced in recent days with a different kind of suffering.

You see, the problems I had when I was 30 were all things that happened to me.  I did not deserve to get fired; even if I did, it really shouldn’t have happened when our family was in the middle of being the test case for the constitutionality of adoption law in the state of Virginia (for real); I lost weight because for the first time in my life I didn’t have to be somewhere at 7am Monday morning and my body didn’t know how to handle that; and the pneumonia just added insult to injury.  But what made all this somehow easier to bear was that it was not my fault.  I could put on my martyr face and be stoic and white-knuckle through it, not without a certain amount of satisfaction in the assurance that people knew the score and sympathized with me.

That is not the case now (if it truly was then).  I have been persevering toward a life goal for two years now and the end is finally in sight.  I will graduate in May with my MBA, Deo volente, and still be married to my best friend, still part of a church I have long labored for, still employed in a job I love, still living in a community we are quickly becoming a part of.  But two years of 80+ hours a week of commitments outside the home is finally starting to show the strain.  Pursuing all these dreams at once has come at significant cost to me and to all the people I am close to, and I’ve come to realize of late that the cost has been too high.  Those friends who are close to me have all approached me in their own ways, unprompted and sometimes unappreciated, to urge me to readjust my priorities before I flame out or before structures start collapsing in my life.  The most painful of these readjustments has been my recent decision to step down from service in the church for a time so that I can reconnect with Jesus and with my family.  And what makes it hurt is the knowledge that this time it is my fault.  I have not maintained healthy boundaries of time and attention in many areas, and the consequences I am dealing with are of my own making.

Working through this difficulty is made possible (I will not say easy) by the kind of relational community in which we live at Holy Cross, one in which we intentionally pursue those we love to help bear their burdens.  But with my inescapable philosophical bent it leaves me wondering: is this perhaps a higher stage of maturity through which we must ultimately pass?  In our service to Christ do we have to begin by bearing an unjust burden, then by bearing a just burden?  Does the disparity between the two serve to drive us to the unlikely hope that either of these may – no, must – be laid at the foot of the cross?  If so it is a blessed desperation that prompts that hope, because to know that grace will also be the answer to the trials I have brought on myself is a reassuring prospect indeed.  I know where grace leads.

I try to peer yet further along this line of thought, and it quickly grows dim: is the next stage after this a yet more painful one?  Does the example of Abraham offering up his son show a third plateau of spiritual experience to which I must still ascend?  His faith in a resurrection God enabled him not only to accept a trial that was placed on him, or to take the responsibility of a trial he had himself created; but actually to place an unjust burden on one he loved so that they too could know what it was to feel the pain of a broken world.  Robert E. Lee once said that to be a great soldier you had to love your brothers in arms, but to be a great general you had to command the death of the thing you love.  At this my foresight fails me, and with tears I turn aside; if such is required of me, Dominus videt, and I will do my best to remain faithful.

All my life I have known that I was called to be a leader, and that in many spheres: family, church, friends, work, community, self.  If I had known what the journey would be like I might never have begun, but now that it is evident what blessed experience is born of such love, I cannot but follow after.  It is a curious wine that tastes so much like the cup of wrath but warms in me the mighty flame of God’s unconditional approval.  It is the cup my Master drank, and as I take it I remember his words:

Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, for even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

JV

Photo credit: Laura Hausler art

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV