With Me

Lyrics
Every time I fall down
And lay broken on the ground
Every time I try hard
And it all falls apart
In Every love that is lost
every dream that is crushed
Every time that I’m wrong
Or get stuck on the thorns

You are with me when the darkness sets in
You are with me you carry all my sins
When I’ve lost all my hope
And I feel so alone
You say you are with me and you’ll never let go

Every night that I’m scared
And I think you don’t care
In every tragedy lived
Full of pain that life gives

You are with me when the darkness sets in
You are with me you carry all my sins
When I’ve lost all my hope
And I feel so alone
You say you are with me and you’ll never let go

Meditation
Doctrine aside, if I only observe the narrative of my life and the lives of others, I see two things happening simultaneously. The first is that life is full of truly tragic events. Events that cannot be explained away with a good reason. These things I categorize as evil or the way things should not be. Even just a little bit of lived experience shows me this. And the strange thing is it seems to be more than just pain avoidance. I feel this for others and there are even moments when I feel empathy for those who wish me ill when they encounter tragedy. I also see that within myself that it’s not so much the pain that crushes me, though enough pain can surely crush a man, but the meaninglessness of the pain. The meaninglessness of suffering is almost worse than the actual suffering.

The second thing I notice is that no matter how deeply I’ve fallen into suffering, there seems to be a force that brings soothing and peace. Now at first I observe this as a natural response. When my body is depleted from the ache it cannot dive that deeply into the psychological trauma of my situation anymore for lack of energy. But if you’ve ever been in prolonged states of suffering you run into this force in such a way that it seems to be animated. It’s a presence that at least feels like is aware of me and I of it. Going even deeper I’ve found that I can talk to this force and it seems to respond. So that perhaps a better way to think of it is a spirit or animated force.

And when I experience the nature of this spirit it seems to want me to not suffer. It seems to offer me moments of true rest in the storm. And my situation may not have changed at all but it is as if the spirit speaks that all things will be well in the end.

When I was in a particularly difficult part of my life and full of deep agony, I went to a therapist who was a Christian. In one of the more raw sessions I was bawling like a baby and my heart ached more deeply than I’ve experienced up until that point. In that moment, my therapist said “Would you like Jesus to take your pain away from you?” At that point I was Christian but likely did not believe that Jesus really cared on the level of the individual about inconsequential things like ‘feelings'. But in this moment I was so desperate for relief that I said yes. My therapist then said, “Ask him to take the pain from you.” So through tears and sobbing I mumbled, “Jesus please take this pain from me.”

That instant my body started getting hot, my entire face started to tingle strongly. Next thing I knew a force started pulling something out of my face. The closest physical experience I can compare it to is when you stick your face out of the window when you’re driving fast and it feels as if the air is being sucked out of your lungs. But this was not air, this was that ache. As my face tingled and that feeling of having something drained out of my face continued the ache in my body went away. The feeling only stopped when the ache was totally gone.

I never felt ache around that particular subject or part of my life again. It had truly been removed. And I called on that spirit. And His name is Jesus because He responded and took away my pain. I can’t explain it scientifically or rationally but I experienced it. So how can I do anything but believe in Him and follow Him?

So in the end there are two things, the meaningless suffering and tragedy of life and this is undeniable based on purely existing. But then there is this secondary force that seems to want to take away pain and set things right. And I called Him Jesus and He answered by that name and took away my pain. What to make of this doctrinally I can’t fully say but by lived experience I can never deny that Jesus cares and Jesus is with me.

- kid in flight