Not all of us have ventured into the depths of life where the light is scarce. Where the bad things live the most freely. We don't venture into those dark depths, where it's cold, directions become difficult to sort out and there is little to know warmth from others to wrap ourselves up in.
Few of us have had to endure that environment. Many are fortunate enough, dare I suggest, smart enough to not find those wrong turns that lead the few into these badlands. The dark places where the calloused and violent play.
The path to this place is as complex as it is long. There are few indicators, the ones that are there, are typically hidden from our view point. We miss most of them; the "turn back", "wrong way" signs that would flag us to say, "hey, we might not want to go down here...."
That said, once we hit a certain point there is, rarely, ever turning back. We have to complete the journey into this place of emptiness and despair and we have to embrace it like a warm blanket on a frigid January night. As we venture here our names are taken and posted to the walls of the fallen. They are notated as having punched our tickets into the deepest realms of the undercarriage of life. It's a signing so that, if we make it out, we can get our t-shirts at the end to say we've been there and done that. (I've always been a fan of free shirts and I fucking earned mine.....)
This place I speak of is called Rock Bottom.
It's where, while we are living, our souls are collected and taken to see if they will eternally rest in this place or if we are willing and able to pull ourselves out of the muck, to rise from the ashes of this contaminated hell and become a version of ourselves that we would have, otherwise, never been able to find. It's a reckoning.
There's a moment in all of the madness, all of the screeching torment (I'm jumping ahead here), we are gasping for air, we are barely holding on to our sanity, the belief that who we are and what we've been is irrelevant and poisonous to those around us - it's in this place a vision comes to us. You can barely see it. You can hardly even begin to look at it. But this blurry, stark silhouette is familiar. It speaks to you. Softly. Almost impossible to hear and you have to strain to hear it, you have to squint your eyes as hard as you can through the piercing winds of those things falling around you to see it. The chaos of the badlands and all of the violent things shutter in its presence. they LOATHE it entirely and erratically wail and tussle to keep you from connecting with it.
This image I speak of, calling out to you, is what you COULD be. If you pull yourself from this place, if you are able to survive it; the image you're dying to see in front of you, is a version of yourself that was nonexistent prior to finding Rock Bottom.
The softness you feel from this vision is tangible on your cracked and torn finger tips. It's the first breadth of warmth you've been able to feel in a long while. As you wipe the crust and grime of past loss, the despair, the desperations the wrong turns from your eyes and start to wet your lips again the image becomes more clear to you. The whirling winds around you start to get blocked out.... You realize this image - you if you can only stand - is reaching out to you.
BAM!
You're face down again, the heat is immense and the vision is gone. The image has disappeared as the regret of lost opportunity, the death of a loved one comes howling back - it's ravaging the inkling of hope that enters its arena. See, Rock Bottom crumbles and can not exist if HOPE is introduced. If BELIEF finds its way into this place, it will tear it apart at the foundation and the chasms that are Rock Bottom, begin to implode on one another.
But, once you are here, it's nearly impossible to find these world killers. It's hard to feel hope or believe that you can ever find yourself again. There's so much noise, so much hurt, your body has gone into survival mode so you're barely able to feel. The demons whip and slash to a point where you can barely put your own thoughts together. The only tone you can hear is the monotone sound of self-doubt and disbelief. This is when those nasty, violent things that are so mischievous, love to offer you the false hopes - those answers that deceive you into believing it's the way to feel again. It's the way to stop the hurting.
They hand you alcohol. Maybe it's a cocktail of drugs. It's a swish of broken friendships and relationships. They introduce those people that are already tenants in Rock Bottom as people you'll need to understand where you're at. These vagrants are presented as guides for one another through the emptiness to only trek into more emptiness. The presentation is false hope, false belief with self medication that is meant to only breed self-loathing to keep you paying the rent.
In fact, the pit falls in Rock Bottom are endless. It's a myriad of wrong turns, dead ends and misdirection that will keep one there permanently if they are not of the keenest of mind and spirit. This is, in fact, what Rock Bottom is consistently attempting to strip away from you - your spirit. The creatures of here, are constantly seeking it out - the scent of it always dripping from their ferocious fangs. The taste of it is permeated into their foul nostrils and they long for the taste of it again. They will never stop hunting you. The taste of a dying soul - it's what they long for as they prowl the baron wasteland that is Rock Bottom.
You can not hide from these beasts. They will find you and you will have to face them.
Fear. Regret. Shame. Embarrassment. Self-Loathing. Pride. Ego. Arrogance.
To name of a few of these wretched beasts that surely hunt your spirit. The hope to escape the tormentors is found in only one approach. The only way to navigate away from the clenches of sure death in this land of dying spirits is through one path - one must find that image of that comes to us so dimly through the swirling winds and stinging rain of Rock Bottom. That angelic picture that is what we could be, what we have been and what God has intended for us. Because, He is still present in this place of despair and hurt. He still moves through these battle grounds grasping up the lost souls crying out for his touch. He is the only thing that can fend off the fiends as they wreck your neck back to suck dry the spirit that God has given you. He snaps them in two, he destroys them with one mighty swing for those that are still holding on to their Faith.
In the darkest moments of our hell. In the most bleak, in the most painful, in those moments that we are the weakest, He is there, behind us, breathing life back into us a little bit by little bit. Even when we feel our Belief is most shaken. Even when we feel the claws of our demons scratching down the backs of our spirits waiting to take them completely from us - there He is holding his hand out - pleading for us to take it. Crying out for us to hear him. Screaming deeply into the pits of the best parts of us to stand up and to RUN.
To run with him out of the Rock Bottom. To flee our tormentors and allow Him to relinquish them from our lives - permanently if we will just let Him take control.
See, God is the one that provides us that image of what we should be. It's what He wants for us to be and oh, He longs for us to see it. To be able to feel from the tips our hairs down to the ends of our toes this person that he has painted out for us and our lives. This person that will make the world safe for our closest of loved ones. This person that will inspire our children to become the best version of themselves and know that they are worth it to us. This image is provided to us to remind us that we are worth it, even when we don't feel it in ourselves. Because this lack of hope, this lack of belief and this lack of love we have for ourselves is what Rock Bottom wants us to believe. It's how Rock Bottom keeps us there; consistently taking up the rent so that we never leave. God knows without this image, without us depending on Him to help us back to our feet that we will stay in Rock Bottom until it finds away to terminate us.
This is the ill factor of this place - no one lives in Rock Bottom - they are only visitors on temporary visas. One either escapes to, ideally, never return, or Rock Bottom consumes that soul and they cease to exist. There are only two options here.
I pray, as I have experienced this place, that you will turn your eyes north. That you will grab on to that hope, to that faith and the image that God has given you and you hold on to it with all that you possess. Because these two things are the ONLY way one leaves. These two things are the ONLY way one rises back to their feet and continues with the fight. I know this because I have experienced that fight at the loudest of volumes. I know the path in and I have, through grace, found the path out.
There is no shame in finding yourself in Rock Bottom - life can be a mean and cruel place. The sharpness of it all and cut through the thickest of hearts; but the strength to rise is in each of us. The path out is different for all of us, but there is, surely, a way out. Do not give up hope. Do not give up on belief. Do not forget that there is a God longing to hold you close. Do not forget that there are those around you counting on your return and that need YOU. The broken you and the YOU that can make it through the turmoil and stench of brokenness to become that person you can hardly see in this moment. They're waiting. He is waiting, hoping to help you see the love and mission He has for you.
So stand up. Move your feet one step at a time and do not be weary if you fall again. That is only a call to rise. Continue until you are firm in your stance and you will find your way out.
"Hope is being able to see that there is light, despite all of the darkness...."
J.L.Copeland
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