Compounding misery


When pain and losses add up, we sometimes don’t know how we’ll ever live again—until we see God’s light


By Jami B. Hawkins


he idea of compound interest is fascinating. Say you are 20 years old and want to retire when you are 65—as a millionaire. How to accomplish this? How much to save? According to those “in the know”—and you can find many ver- sions of this calculation on the Inter- net—all you have to do is make one deposit of $13,729.21 at 10 percent interest at age 20. By the time you turn 65, your one-time investment, through the magic of compounding interest, will become $1 million. While I can’t comprehend the


T


magic of compounding as it relates to money, I can understand it as it relates to pain or loss. Grief is the price we often pay for love. You lose a child, parent, spouse—and you grieve. Even “lesser” losses can plunge us into profound sadness,


Hawkins lives in Columbia, S.C., where she teaches piano and enjoys spending time with her grandchildren.


perhaps even situational depression. Your lover says goodbye, you lose your job, a friend is diagnosed with a serious disease. It all ads up. As I’ve gotten older, losses seem to have this cumulative effect on me. I first discovered this at my aunt’s funeral when I found myself fight- ing back body-racking, heartrending sobs. Intellectually I knew this was irrational. My aunt had lived a long life and died peacefully in her sleep. I had not seen her in years. But losing her reminded me of my mother’s death the previous year. And seeing my cousins again, espe- cially my first cousin’s grandchild, reminded me that we’ve all gotten so much older. Which reminded me that things hadn’t exactly turned out like we all had dreamed of and talked about at gatherings when we were children. Divorce, illness, financial problems, loneliness had visited us all. Hence, the sobs and misery that I gave into while driving away from


34 The Lutheran • www.thelutheran.org


the cemetery after my aunt’s funeral. Ahh, the “magic” of compounding. Several years ago when an important relationship ended rather abruptly, the magic—or misery—of compounding happened again. I was thrown into disproportionate despair. I cried for days that turned into weeks that quickly became months. Finally I realized that I was griev- ing more than the loss of this person’s company. I was grieving all of my broken relationships. I cried for the hearts I had broken and for my own broken heart. Past marriages, long- term riffs with relatives or friends, my sometimes tenuous relationship with my children when they were teenagers—suddenly everything was cumulative. And again, I was miserable.


I often not only lose sight of the


light at the end of the proverbial tun- nel but also lose hope that there was a light in the first place. “Why are you treating your humble servant so badly,” I cry to God, not so humbly. I sometimes think, as did T.S.


Eliot in his poem “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” that “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of the silent seas.” After a loss, I experience a “little” death. Perhaps you do as well. Sometimes I can appear quite


resilient: I put on a happy face and keep going. Sometimes I’m nothing but a walking dead person and, with apologies to author Sylvia Plath, I am “Lady Lazarus.” Inside, in that place I believe is my soul, something dies. I lose faith a little. Sometimes I can’t fathom God’s presence when I am, like Jonah, in the belly of the whale at the bottom of the ocean. At times like this I’ve told God: “I want resurrection now.” Often God is silent. My health doesn’t improve. My friend’s cancer takes a turn for the worse. A loving relationship eludes me. I wonder if my prayers are


DESIGNPICS


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52