Universal realities are in the field of the living, and loss is the bane of us all. At least that’s how it feels. When you’ve plummeted into the realm of trauma, and you face a reality seven hundred times the worst stench of hell, you’re forgiven for hating the very notion of life.
But what if I said that at the end is the beginning—that heaven’s opportunity resides in the first step that is deconstruction. “Deconstruction of what?” I hear you say.
Deconstruction of the SELF. When I lost just about everything in September 2003, everything barring limited time with my precious daughters, I faced a time where I lost just about every hope, and I had little control over every facet of my own life. Since then, there have been other times like it, but nothing quite as stark as that period.
Any of us and all of us, when we face that time of catastrophe, enter a time of deconstruction of the self that feels cavernously worse than we could’ve previously conceived. We’re tempted to think, “Well, if this is the end, I might as well end it all,” and many of us have contemplated such an end.
When you’re in the place of a hell that feels disconcertingly like it will never end, you’ve got the opportunity of facing and responding. I’d argue that in debilitating and soul scourging depression and fierce lashes of anxiety that affront us in grief and loss, we cannot help but face the dark night of the soul that has visited us.
And yet, every single one of us has been tempted to dissociate—to look away from our pain. To ‘drug’ it away. It makes sense to cite Dr Gabor Maté here:
“Your depression was a major success... addiction is a solution.”
— Dr. Gabor Maté
As you read these words, did your mind think, “What?!” Just what is the Hungarian/Canadian physician saying?
Depression is that place where the defences are down, and it is therefore a gateway to the pain we perhaps have never before seen—that trauma we’ve never acknowledged or recognised was ALREADY part of us. In such a place, addiction is a solution. It provides short-term comfort and the ability to turn away from the cutting edges of anguish.
But we know that addiction only exacerbates the pain, longer term.
Facing the truth of DECONSTRUCTION means going inward into the rawness of the pain knowing that if you’re already broken by FACING, you won’t break any more, and you’ll process and head ultimately into the opposite outward reality—facing the truth of RECONSTRUCTION.
Reconstruction is the reality of coming closer to the authentic person you’ve always wanted to be—the REAL you. But you can’t get there unless you’re prepared to go back, have the inauthenticity taken off (the purpose of deconstruction), to be reconstructed in what you’ve learned.
That’s the purpose in suffering. And if you’re suffering and you can’t change your reality, you’ll take what you can get—especially if it’s the hope of becoming something you’ve always wanted to be.
Deconstruction is a great learning curve. It feels worse than death—a living hell—but every form of hell in deconstruction suits the purpose of moving through and beyond it.
Somehow—from the vantage point in deconstruction—you’ve got nothing more to lose and all else is gain. You face a revenant experience. Out of death comes life.
THIS is what deconstruction is, using biblical JOB as prooftext: it’s suffering that has nothing to say, that sits and faces the awful reality, in faith that simply FACING will prove the way through it. Of course, having empathetic friends and mentors makes it easier; something Job didn’t have. Sackcloth and ashes, a rich Old Testament tradition in lament.
In deconstruction, you don’t have the answer. Yet, in being still in that reality is the ability to process. Acceptance can only be reached when we try it on in deconstruction. In FACING this awful reality, in resisting the temptation to turn away and dissociate, we see what’s truly INSIDE us, and that’s the CAPACITY to bear such a burden!
Seeing yourself demonstrate courage in bearing the pain through facing means something infinitely deeper when you know the Presence and Spirit of God is with you—the God of the universe testifying to your courage.
In the very moment—and it can be a SINGLE moment of realisation—you face your pain courageously, sitting still in it, weeping authentic tears, you realise you can do it—be truly real in such a raw state of deconstruction—where there is nothing left to separate you from your authentic self.
Deconstruction is the pathway to authenticity. It only comes when strength is gone. Yet, there is accessed a strength we never thought we had access to—in this, the seeming end of all things.
Facing the truth of your deconstruction then tends to be a season of life. Nobody is ever released from their pain immediately. Life doesn’t work in instantaneous change. To learn anything about deconstruction, you must be immersed in it for a relatively long time. But early on there’s confidence that you know what to do. So you just keep doing it—showing up, day after day, suffering, lamenting, in faith for something better, courageously.
Most encouragingly, reconstruction begins to occur somewhere in the deconstruction phase, almost as much as a reward for simply having the courage to go into deconstruction.
Facing the truth of deconstruction proves courage. Courage enough to go into the hell of the nothingness of self is the golden key that unlocks one’s authenticity.
Authenticity is the gold of reconstruction.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
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