Finding a Safe Place and a Deep Peace

“I am watching the world faint in fear over COVID-19, but I have a deep peace within. I have a safe place still, next to a God I can trust…”

Photo by Fletkefoto

“How did I get here anyway?” I was asking God, but he didn’t seem to hear. Ten stories up afforded a decent view of Harlem from Mount Sinai Hospital. I would sit at a window every night and look at the blackened windows of the brick apartment buildings, looking for signs of life – a plant, a curtain, a lamp. But all I saw around me was death. I was 21 and locked up in a psych ward. How did I get here?

The year was 1977, the year Elvis died and Son of Sam was captured. The Bronx burned like a smoldering campfire and there was a palpable violence beneath the thick city heat. I was on Lithium for what was then labeled “manic depression,” a diagnosis that was permanent, they said, like a tattoo. If I took my pill every morning, I would be safe. But I was unraveling. The brokenness was deeper than my seesaw moods and even genetic disposition. And nobody could fix it.

FIGHTING FEAR

Six weeks and five medications later, I left the hospital. Fear went with me. Panic attacks and claustrophobia became demanding new guests to accommodate, so I walked everywhere. I was afraid to go back to the psych ward, and afraid to be out. Side effects from the meds made it difficult to feed myself, let alone focus. A kind therapist eventually weaned me off them (young people were rarely on any psychiatric medications in the ’70s), but I was still broken, reeling from loss and rejection that had settled deep within since childhood.

I left New York City a few years later, running to Cape Cod, to the water’s edge where I could run no more. I thought the city was my problem, and that maybe salt air and seagulls and writing poetry by the ocean would “fix” me. And for a little while, they did. The fear abated, and motherhood and marriage gave me purpose – for a time. Then the restlessness and rage would ramp up, sedated only by wine and later, cheap vodka. I was barely 30 and my liver was failing.

FINDING PEACE

I remember so clearly the end of it all – crying out to the God that I thought was so detached from who I was and where I was. It was an uncertain prayer. “I can’t do this! You have to help me!” But he answered me. He bent down and pulled me up out of the mud and set me in a safe place with a clear view, right next to him. Then he began to clean me off, peeling back years of bitterness, fixing the brokenness with his gentle hands.

Meeting Jesus is meeting real love. I remember the first time I read this in the Bible: “Perfect love casts out fear”. I knew it was not only true, but that it was the key to living a life that was free. His love never fails, never lets go. For 33 years, he has brought me soaring over mountaintops of joy and blessing, and has walked with me through the immeasurable agony of losing a child. Now, in March 2020, I am watching the world faint in fear over COVID-19, but I have a deep peace within. I have a safe place still, next to a God I can trust, and a perfect love that does not change with pandemics or politics.

I don’t ever want to forget the girl who could hardly hold a fork, who walked 100 blocks to escape fear, the girl labeled “broken beyond repair.” Why? Because remembering her keeps me closer every day to the one who heard my cry, the “mender of the broken-hearted,” – perfect love, Jesus Christ.