Clarity

by Chris Ecklund, MA, CSCS, USAW

This is not a platform or forum I use for a topic such as this often. In fact, as I reflect just now, I don’t know if in the 6 ½ years that I’ve had this blog I have ever shared such thoughts here. Today I will… 

There are but a few days a year when the Truth is seen clearly by my heart, my mind and my spirit. Only a few. Most often I live my days fighting for one or two (or even all three) to see what I long for them to see. It is not easy for me…though, I feel it should be in light of what the Truth is. So I fight for it and I battle for it often, realizing that I will continue to do so for the rest of my days on this Earth. 

Today I see clearly. It is a gift. A gift that feeds me to the depths of my being. And because today this gift of Truth reaches to my innermost, I have spent the morning in tears from nearly the moment I awoke and as of yet they continue while I put these words down. It is difficult for me to speak. 

Brokenness 

Suffering 

Grace 

Mercy 

Love 

Healing 

Peace 

These words are near to me…in this sequence.

Brokenness

I am a broken man. So painfully other than what I want to be. So utterly in conflict with myself and paradoxically against my being, it is truly a mystery to me how I make it through my days. I am confused at my own destructiveness for I desire something different. Yet it is who I am. 

Suffering

Suffering abounds. It confuses and perplexes and bewilders me. I mentioned someone in a recent article I wrote a month or so ago. Cancer. Stage 4. I do not know her well but I have watched her life from afar. Off and on she has battled cancer for about 30 years. Again she battles…perhaps for her 4th or 5th time. 

Grace and Mercy. Love and Healing. 

Today is the celebration of a man who lived on this Earth over 2,000 years ago. Today is the celebration and the reminder of why he existed…why he was here…why he came to walk among us for but a short and history-changing time. As I awoke this morning I asked for renewal. Renewal of my heart and of my mind…that I might see clearly and as someone seeing if for the first time what this day means. What it is about. What it meant on this celebrated weekend over 2,000 years ago when a man “made all things new.” And what it meant he had to do in order to accomplish this thing his father asked of him. Today I’ve been granted that renewal and that vision. I know it is but a glimpse of the greater reality and it will only last for a short time…so I write now. 

Unearned and undeserved, this man was broken. 

Willingly and faithfully this man walked through unjust and unfathomable suffering. There has never been another who deserved less suffering than was given him. 

And, it is through this act of grace and mercy the True Love was revealed. A man laid down his life for his friends…no greater love has ever been known. 

Peace

It is in this love—and only this love—that all of the Brokenness and the Suffering find healing and where peace is found. It is the paradox of this world, this life…that through our joyous brokenness and suffering and depth of despair, we may truly find life. And it is to these things I cling, for all of my life hangs on them. For it is in them, and only them, I am reminded of the need I have for something I cannot and dare not attempt attain in and of myself. It is a gift…a gift of grace, from man that knew me before I was born and knows me into eternity. 

Pride used to rob me of the joy my brokenness. It does so no longer. It causes me to rejoice and give great thanks for a gift of love that brings me to my knees in awe and an inability to understand it. 

Suffering robs many in this world of happiness and joy. The unfair and unjust ways of this world scream for the score to be settled and balance restored. Suffering does not cause this within the woman I earlier mentioned. It draws her to a place of peace and a foreknowledge of a time and place unending that will be perfectly free of suffering and full of justice…and it causes her to long for that time. 

Grace 

Mercy 

Love 

Healing 

Peace 

…Christ