There's Room of North Carolina

By Pastor John Blackshire

CW: Suicidal ideation

Most days I do not want to be alive.

It is easier for my brain to think of creative ways to escape than it is to think of sermons.

I have come to resent God a bit that this is my portion to carry, that suicidal ideation feels closer to me and inside me more than the Holy Spirit does and through it all I am supposed to go on and encourage others when I simply want to perish.

I try to tell myself that I am not alone that people care for me, but the reality of it is that mental illness is not rational.

It does not follow the logic of what is true or actually not true.

It doesn’t really actually care what I know intellectually to be true, because on an emotional psychological level, I am at war inside of my own head and so I try to sit in things that ground me and bring me back to a safety net that’s around me

And yet, I still find myself struggling, but as I tried to prepare for today, and I found myself being swept and overrun by thoughts that I should perish, what I also realized was just as my mental illness is not rational, it does not always make sense to me, so who does the love of God also hold an irrationality. It does not always make sense to me.

The love of God at times can seem ephemeral or liminal — this thing or space we can’t fully touch or inhabit.

We get these burst of goodness and happiness and in those moments it is easy to witness and know God is near. In our successes and moments of progress it is easy to know that God is working.

When things are good, it is easy to know that God is good. But even if you don’t struggle with mental illness like I do, I know you are struggling with something.

The burden of humanity is to feel and to struggle and like me, I know that for many of us the burden of humanity can feel too much.

We have a president and lawmakers that spew hate as much as they breathe. We have comrades who are unhoused that we worry and care about.

We have children and parents whose health and well-being cloud our mind as we try to just simply make it through the days.  

While the gift of life is beautiful the burden of humanity is often much.

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As many of you know I spent a good chunk of my 20s in Phoenix and Phoenix’s nickname is the Valley of the Sun.

This makes sense if you understand the geography and climate of Phoenix.

Most think of the state is hot and a desert, but the reality is only part of Arizona is a desert — the valley part — the rest of the state is made of forest and mountain ranges and you can ski and see snow the closer you get to Utah and Nevada.

Depending on how you travel into Phoenix the drive will take you through the Tonto National Forest and you have to slowly descend down the mountain range to get to the Valley of the Sun.

You pass through fog and evergreen trees and cabins and wildlife, making your way around steep curve after curve for hours until eventually the land starts to level out and the landscape starts to congeal into too dry farmland, and eventually residential suburbs, and if you keep going you’ll finally hit the skyscrapers of downtown.

And when you are in the center of Phoenix, in a jungle of concrete and heat,

Heat that melts your flip flops and causes your metal jewelry to burn your skin,

when the wind is dusty and dry and suffocating,

when you are there it is easy to forget that just a while ago, just a short distance away you were in cool lush forest.

What is visible, what is big becomes your association with the state.

You start to adjust to the valley

— you drink more water, and wear long sleeves to protect yourself from the dangers of the sun. You go out in winter and not summer because it is cooler, quickly — if you want to survive — you adjust and follow the rules of the valley.

For many of us, being in the valley makes it difficult to remember how close we are to the mountaintop.

But I come today saints to remind us — to remind me — that we serve a God of the Valley and the Fog.

The same God who gave us the green of the Tonto National Forest is the same God who keeps and protects us from the heat.

And trust me I know this moment is hot.

I know this moment is suffocating. I know this moment is dry and seems without life or growth at times, but as the verses for today tell us nothing can separate us from the love of God.

No authoritarian government, no financial circumstance, no relationship or personal struggle, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.

We serve a God, who sent Jesus for us.

I don’t know bout y’all but when I think of Jesus I don’t think about saving us from sin, I think about a God who via his child came to earth to suffer along with us.

A God who saw the burden of humanity and made the active decision to experience it alongside us. A Messiah who came to fight empires and injustice, who came to give us the ultimate example of love, when I think of Jesus and all he’s done for me, my soul cries out because I know he gets our pain.

I think about his life as a tangible proof that we are not alone. That he too carried a literal and metaphorical cross and he intimately knows what we go through.

He came not to save us from the myth of sin or our supposit wrongdoings, but he came so that we know whether we are being baked by the sun of the valley or unsure of our next step in the fog of the mountaintop, he is there.

He is always there!

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I started by sharing my struggle with mental illness and as a part of my coping practices I like to be in small spaces, they make me feel safe.

So I like to sit in closets and bathrooms and just be with myself as I calm down.

And for a decade now, my cat sugar sits with me in these small spaces.

She sits on the toilet while I sit in the tub and she stays with me and when I get out of my head and back into the space I can hear her purring.

Nice, loud, consistent rhythmic purrs.

She doesn’t do anything but sit and purr.

Saints, as I conclude, I implore us listen for the hum and consistent rhythm of God.

To know whether we are in a small tiny space trying to make it, whether we are in a vast valley, or the mountain top trying to see clearly, whether we are somewhere in between unsure of what direction we are going, God is there and nothing, nothing, I mean nothing, can separate us from the love of God.

Amen.