“May darkness cover the twilight stars;
May they never see the breaking of dawn’s light.
Because they did not shut the doors of the womb
they did not hide such sorrow from my eyes” (Job 3.9-10).
Has it ever been bad enough that you wish you weren’t here?
We begin with a man, Job, who opens his mouth and whose sorrow comes running forth like a breached dam. Without the frame to guide us, we do not know what has happened or, even, who this person is. He could be a co-worker or a friend with eyes dark from sleepless nights. He could be a stranger seated in a heap on the sidewalk, their back to the grocery store’s walls. Their troubles could be self-inflicted or a bad roll of the dice.
And without the introduction that is so familiar to us, the words come to us without a chance to brace ourselves. Like a person struck by an intense physical pain, Job cries out and the sound rattles our bones. Whatever darkness has descended upon him, we know it instinctively. It is the echo of every nightmare, every anxious thought that we do our best to keep at the periphery of our conscious thought. It is the reminder that all we hold dear is fragile.
And it, like all grief, makes us consider if it has ever been so bad that we’d rather we were never, ever here at all.
I can tell you that I have. And not in the self-pitying George Bailey I-wish-I’d-never-been-born way. No, I mean the thoughts that can haunt even the brightest noon. It’s realizing that you no longer want to feel what you are feeling and you would rather erase it all—every sunset, every sunrise.
Which is why Job is so difficult to approach. Why I know that I have put this book aside many, many times: it touches things I’d rather not feel. It is not this stranger’s sorrow that strikes me, but the reminder of the possibility of such depths.
And, yet, the poet’s desire isn’t to drive us to despair or trigger old wounds. No, this cry, this honest, primal, howling scream from the pits of a heart lost in darkness is meant to invite us into the scene. It is a shelter, built in the wasteland, where the door is opened and we are invited inside. A place where all those thoughts and feelings we must keep down and hidden are allowed to come forward, freely displayed.
It is scary. It is downright terrifying because of what it’s asking from us. And it would be cruel if were asked to do so alone.
But this opening is an invitation: an invitation to admit to the suffering, sorrowful places within us; because, it tells us we are not alone with them. Job is brave enough to voice them for us, to say what we can often be too fearful of saying: that we are in pain. And in that courage, he dares us to give voice to our own; so, someone else may see that it is okay to find themselves so broken and so sad that they may wish they’d never been here.
And find a reason to stay.
Jesus, you know what it’s like to see things go dark at midday, to want nothing more than the pain to stop. Draw near to us, to everyone who longs to be unmade, and remind us morning is coming.
(If you’re having thoughts like Job’s today, please reach out to someone. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and can also be reached by dialing 988. Morning comes, and there are those that want you to see it.)