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jasonhackwith · 6 months

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When Midnight Fell

"A man’s spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?" -- Proverbs 18:14

When midnight fell, I was broken, bleeding, and weeping; lost in a drunken haze of memories and sorrow and regret. My last impaired thought before I passed out was that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t wake up this time. I was okay with that. In fact, to my pain-wracked mind, it sounded just fine.

When the sheriff’s deputy showed up on my doorstep with the divorce papers, I was utterly beside myself with grief. I broke down completely.

Unable to sleep for days, I would walk through our quiet apartment all night as if in a dream, touching little things from our life together. Her face haunted me. Memories swirled all around and tormented me. I tried to pray, but had no words. I had absolutely no appetite and getting myself to take my medications was an utter act of will. Then there were the dark times that I just stood there, staring at them—and thought about taking all of them.

"Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, Where there is no standing; I have come into deep waters, Where the floods overflow me. I am weary with my crying; My throat is dry; My eyes fail while I wait for my God." -- Psalm 69:1-3, NKJV

Ultimately, it was the sight of the curio cabinet in the living room at about three in the morning that shook me out of my stupor. I came out of the bedroom after another failed attempt at sleep, turned the light on, and there it was. Set up like a little shrine with our marriage license, cake topper, and her preserved bouquet; the sight suddenly made my knees buckle. I literally fell on my face in the living room and cried out to God with all my heart.

I couldn’t pray, at first. I just lay there on my face, on the floor, and sobbed until I fell asleep. When I woke, it was a long while before I could find words. When I finally did, it was an explosion.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I screamed at God. “How dare you take her away from me after all I’ve been through? Heart attacks, migraines, unemployment, and now this? How dare you? I’m finally doing what You commanded me to do. I’m trying to obey You, and what good is it doing me? I’m finally trying to love her well, and she just throws it back in my face. What good am I doing? I wish I was dead. Why don’t you just kill me?!”

“Would you give up your life for her?” God asked me quietly.

The question came suddenly and I wasn’t at all prepared for it. Then, the husband’s high calling from Ephesians 5:25 thundered through my head, and I sobbed bitterly. If I was supposed to love my wife as Christ loves the church, and give myself up for her, did that mean that I was somehow supposed to die for her? Could I love her that much? What more could He ask?

Again, the answer came quickly and unexpectedly. “I didn’t ask you to die for her. I’ve already done that. I asked you to give yourself up.”

Weeping, but still furious at God in my grief, I did the spiritual equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and going, “La la la laaa, I don’t hear you.” I closed my heart against God’s voice and wallowed in my pain. It was His fault I was suffering so much, and nobody was going to tell me otherwise. Not even Him.

You would think that after a lifetime of dealing with pain, I would know better. The truth is that I simply didn’t want to believe this might not have a quick solution. I really didn’t want to believe that as much as she needed to change, I did too. But God has a way of speaking to you. When He really wants you to hear something, you’re going to hear it whether you want to or not.

Unfortunately, my way of coping with the destruction of my marriage was to drink. On one terrible night, I decided I would drink enough so that maybe I wouldn’t wake up. Most of that night is a haze, but part of it is indelibly clear. Just before I passed out, I thought that whether I ended up in heaven or hell it would be better than this. If it was heaven, I would be home with Jesus. If it was hell? Well, from where I was at that point, I couldn’t see how hell could be worse.

"So midnight falls, and I? I live; My ears ring with the silent cry, A scream with soft and trembling lips; A wordless cry against the Fall; I live! And I have failed to fail, The gasp with which I came awake, The tears that spill into my hands, The song with which the world was made. I do not know why I still breathe, Or why this heart is beating still; I only know that I still live, I do not know why I am here." -- A Midnight Falls, by Jason Christopher Hackwith

Hours later, I woke up… precisely at midnight. It was not only 12:00 a.m., when my eyes opened and I looked at the clock, the second hand had literally just started ticking around. I felt… strangely sober. I blinked, confused, and then I remembered everything. I wept for a long time, and then the poem A Midnight Falls started to form itself.

Brad Bramlet, a friend and pastor of the church I was attending, showed up at my door one day. He just looked at me for what seemed to be a long time, and then quietly told me in his inimitable humorous way that I looked terrible. He then set me up with his own medical provider so that I could get help with my depression and the other medical problems I was suffering from. I was so touched and grateful for his help. It took a few weeks but I eventually called Brad and told him about the divorce filing. We met again for coffee, talked, and prayed.

“Jason,” he said to me quietly, “in the story of the prodigal son, the father didn’t immediately go chasing off after his son. He let him go, so that he could get to the utter end of himself. He had to get to the place where he began to think that even the servants in his father’s house had better things to eat than the pig slop that now looked good to him. The son had to make the decision to come back on his own.

“She’s running, Jason,” he concluded gently. “You have to let her go where she’s going to go. You can’t save her from what she has to go through before she gets to the end of herself.”

I thought hard about what Brad said and bitterly conceded that he was right. But a phrase from the parable of the prodigal son resounded in my soul:

"And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." -- Luke 15:20

“While he was still a long way off.” The prodigal son didn’t come all the way back to the father. He made the decision to come back, repented, and began to make his way back home. But the father saw him while he was still a long way off, had compassion on him, and welcomed him with a kiss, a great feast and forgiveness.

Ephesians 5:25, my high calling as a husband, commanded me to love my wife as Christ loves the church. We have grieved Christ so many times, and yet He remains faithful. We have cheated on Him again and again with other gods, and yet He is just waiting for us to come to the end of ourselves and start for home.

Through faith, I saw two roads that could lead from where we now stood. Down one road, we would “in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). She would find repentance and forgiveness, even as I have had to find repentance and forgiveness, and God would lead us back together—not to pick up where we left off, but to a completely new relationship founded in truth and a right relationship with Jesus Christ.

I knew that road wouldn’t be easy, even as I determined to stand for my marriage. I knew we would have a lot of terribly hard work to do in counseling and prayer, and that trust that has been betrayed and lost would have to be restored the only way trust can ever be restored: through time, complete honesty, and true mutuality.

The other road, the one in which she would never return, seemed so dark to me that at that time I refused to really consider it. But friends and family gently reminded me that it was a possibility I must prepare for.

I’m so blessed to be surrounded by friends and family whose marriages have survived their own dark times. Their testimony has real power, because they’ve been through the fire and came out the other side. My own parents are the biggest inspiration for me in this area. They’ve been together over fifty years. Through their inspiration and hours of difficult prayer, God gave me the strength to forgive my former wife, even as I continued to pray that she would choose the road that led to our reconciliation.

I continued in prayer and counseling without her, and learned to accept that I had to let her go, regardless of the road she chose and how heartbreaking those decisions were for our families and me. I had to learn to give myself up, to accept that my identity was not found in marriage but in Christ alone. I had to learn to give her to God, and give up the false identity I had clung to. She was going to do what she was going to do. I couldn’t protect her from the consequences of those decisions, and I couldn’t go riding off to save her like a knight in shining armor.

The only thing I could really do for her was pray—but that is no small thing. I made a commitment to pray for her every day. For a long time, I prayed that God would take her to the end of herself, just as he did with the prodigal son. I prayed that God would do whatever he had to do to change her heart, no matter how hard, and lead her to repentance.

Now, there is nothing really wrong with that prayer, but there was something very wrong in me. Something would happen that would change my heart from one wallowing in righteous indignation and anger to one of forgiveness and release.

Seven months after the judge granted my former wife the divorce, I attended a men’s conference in Spokane held by Iron Sharpens Iron. At a marriage workshop, I briefly told my story while asking the speaker for ways that I could love her well, even in our situation. He had kind and encouraging words for me, along with some very practical suggestions.

I was greatly encouraged by the speaker, but it is what happened next that truly changed my life. After the workshop ended, a man came up to me and kindly asked me if he could pray with me. We did so, and he told me he would continue to pray for my former wife and I. He then told me to pray for God to bless her.

I thanked him and walked away, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the surge of emotions that suggestion roiled up within me. Bless her? She betrayed me! I wanted God to take her to the end of herself so she would repent, not bless her! Why should God bless her?

I walked a few more steps in an incredulous funk, then I repeated that question to myself. Why should God bless her? No, that’s the wrong question. Why couldn’t I pray for God to bless her?

That thought literally brought me up short. I felt the Holy Spirit’s conviction upon me so gently, yet so clearly. Hadn’t I forgiven her? It was obvious that on at least some level, I hadn’t.

I slowly walked around the church where the conference was held, weaving in and out of the crowds of men, not really seeing any of them. Silently, I asked God to forgive me for my own hardness of heart, and prayed that He would help me to walk real forgiveness out in faith by praying for Him to bless her.

And then, though it was a little like tearing off my own skin, faith found me there and I prayed the prayer. God, please bless her—despite her betrayal and all she has said and done, bless her. May Your kindness lead her to repentance.

My prayers for first wife changed from that day forward, and my heart began to change as well. God taught me what forgiveness truly is: to release those who hurt us not only to the consequences of their sin, but to the blessing of a dangerous God who forgives and restores.

Ultimately, my former wife chose the other road and remarried. Even if I wanted to renew a relationship with her at that point, I knew that she was forever gone to me. God had another plan, and that plan was my beautiful Lindsay. But at that end of things, I thought I was going to die. In one way of looking at things, I did.

To find life, I had to pass through death. To give myself up, I had to give up my wife. I had to take my leave of everything I thought I was in order to find out who I truly am. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, to give up my life for the one God had for me. I had to learn the hard way that I have to put God first in my life. Putting anything or anyone in His place will only bring grief.

"The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call." -- from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pg 99

What I have been through is only one form of the death to which Christ calls us. But He does not leave us abandoned. He calls us to give everything to Him, but He will put back into our hands what we need, when we need it.

When my first helper betrayed me, God led me to give up my life and give her to Him. Through her abandonment and betrayal, Jesus taught me that He alone is my perfect Helper, that no woman on earth could ever fill the place that He alone holds. But just like Job, God would later bring restoration of all the enemy had stolen. And in His gracious and perfect timing, God brought me a new helper: a true Proverbs 31 woman. My beautiful Lindsay brings me so much joy, but my lesson has been learned the hard way: God will always be first in my heart.

Thirteen years almost to the day after my own midnight fell, I am releasing a print along with a number of other creations. NIL NISI CRUCE is Latin for “Nothing but by the Cross.” It means that nothing good comes easy. It means that Jesus called us to carry our cross and follow Him, even if that means walking straight into the fire or flood. In the remarkable photo by the amazing Stormseeker, we see a hand reaching up to the sky out of deep waters. “Out of the depths I cry to Thee,” (Psalm 130). Feach out and cry out to God in the midst of a flood, when you are under water and struggling for breath. What will you do when wading the waters leads you out into the deep?

What about you? I really want to hear from you. When did your midnight fall? What was the worst moment of your life? What got you through it? How did it change you?

Post a comment below, or if you prefer, message me privately and I will keep it in the family. And, thank you!

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#signature designs #midnight #nil nisi cruce #the river Beautiful

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