Taking Comfort Where You Find It

Getting Comfort Where Comfort Is

John Anderson

I just came home to count the memories  

That I've been counting in my mind 

I just came home to count the memories 

Of a better day and time  

John Anderson 

I know that I can be self-pitying and maudlin. People have told me. Some who know me may feel that I am indulging both by quoting this line from the John Anderson's I Just Came Home to Count the Memories, but, if I may put it this way, this line "ministered" to me: "Everything I ever cared about is gone now, but the memory still remains." Yesterday I visited one of the hometowns and two houses where we lived, and, as it happened, on the way there I was listening to a John Anderson album and heard that song that seemed to suit so well.

Let me put you on notice: This is not a "spiritual" Blog. I am not trying to offer spiritual counsel to anyone. I am struggling. I do not think God has been "unfair" to me. I accept I am under his chastening frown but am not "the mute Christian under the rod." I would not for a moment wish to undermine any one's faith in the Lord and confidence in his helping love. People have been and are in worse places than I and have triumphed by faith. But that is not where I am - at least now.

This Blog is not "spiritual" but is about finding comfort where you can find it. To put it in more "spiritual" terms, it is about "common grace." Beginning last Monday when I made a five hour round trip, I did something counter-intuitive in terms of finding comfort. I started listening to country music again, especially the sad country songs. I listened to Merle and George. To Patty Loveless, Kris Kristofferson, Blake Shelton, and Toby Keith. You might think that would not be good for you. It could let you wallow in your sadness or drive you deeper into it. But I felt a little better.

Why? I thought about it, and I came to the conclusion that the key is empathy. Some songs were written by the artists who recorded them. Some were written by other individuals or teams of writers. The key is that I could identify with what the artists sang. They expressed things that I have felt or feel. That means the writers of the songs must have experienced something like what I am experiencing and didn't mind putting it in words, else they could not have written the songs. If they wrote self-indulgent songs, I'm glad they did.

You can't write a song about being "so lonesome I could cry" unless you've been that alone. You can't write about being "so happy that I can't stop crying" unless you've been that sad. You can't write about being "the kind of man even I can barely tolerate" unless you've felt that way about yourself. You can't write about "looking for a place to fall apart" unless you couldn't control tears. You can't write about "a walking contraction, partly truth and partly fiction" unless you know the self-contradiction that is you. 

And to "sell" the song, most of the time artists have to have experienced something like what they are singing. The country singer who can "put over" his song understands what  David Allan Coe wrote about his imaginary late night ride with the ghost of Hank Williams:

He said, "Mister, can you make folks cry when you play and sing?

Have you paid your dues? Can you moan the blues?

Can you bend them guitar strings?"

He said, "Boy, can you make folks feel what you feel inside?

'Cause if you're big star bound let me warn you it's a long hard ride"

What sad country songs tell me is that, right or wrong, OK or not OK, approved or unapproved, understood or misunderstood, I am not the only person who has felt what I feel. Part of what is so hard about bad feelings is the additional feeling you are alone. It can seem that others are either unable or unwilling to "feel into" what you are feeling. 

You can't blame them. Some have not been there. Others have been there but don't want to go there with you. For others "feeling into" your feeling is just too costly; they have their own troubles, their own lives to lead. There's enough sadness in each life not to enter into the sadness of other lives. Still others find they can "feel into" feeling another's trouble for a little while but only a little while; it's too draining. 

And, of course, it's neither fair nor right just to consider others and their hindrances to empathy. There is your own sorry self which pulls inside itself and/or makes you push others away when they might have and show empathy. 

There is no simple or sole answer. People are complicated. Life is messy. There are nights of the soul through which it seems sometimes the individual soul alone can pass. Certainly the writer of Psalm 88 has an acute awareness of his own feelings and his being alone in them. Is this a self-pitying and whining saint or a hurting and perplexed one who can't find a God on his side?

For my soul is full of troubles,
    and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
    I am a man who has no strength, 
like one set loose among the dead,
    like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
    for they are cut off from your hand.

You have put me in the depths of the pit,
    in the regions dark and deep. 
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
    and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

You have caused my companions to shun me;
    you have made me a horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
     my eye grows dim through sorrow.

 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
    Why do you hide your face from me?
 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
    I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
 Your wrath has swept over me;
    your dreadful assaults destroy me.

They surround me like a flood all day long;
    they close in on me together.
 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
    my companions have become darkness.

                                  Psalm 88:3-9a, 14-18

But you take your comfort where you can find it. Sometimes such comfort as there is comes from "secular" sources like country songs, from the realization that others have been where you are, that others have words to express what you feel. You're thankful for common grace.

Perhaps there are two things here for Christians. The first is a question, which you can judge to be fair or unfair: Why does it seem that unbelievers can have a greater capacity for empathy than believers? Why do we believers seem to struggle with empathy? Does acknowledging and sharing another's painful feelings seem to be a contradiction of faith we believe should be victorious? Do we feel we that our empathy would encourage others in unhealthy feelings of self-pity and self-absorption when we should be encouraging them to look outside themselves to God and to ministry to others? Is there anything about being Christians that holds us back from empathy?

Second, perhaps we Christians would do well to consider the place of empathetic listening to, empathetic sitting with, empathetic helping of our fellow believers. Perhaps there is a "ministry of empathy." As a pastor, I often felt that what people most needed was someone who could communicate and mean, "I understand what you feel. I care. I am here. I will be here as long as you need me, if all I can do is to be here." To do that is much harder than mailing a card, or sending flowers, or delivering a casserole. But, there are times when it is the only thing you can do that makes any difference. 

Anyway, the CD case of country music is in the car waiting to fulfill its ministry of empathy the next time I go more than a couple of blocks from home.