Rich Mullins, "We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are"

Here are the lyrics to the song itself:

It took the hand of God Almighty to part the waters and the sea
But it only took one little lie to separate you and me
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are
And they say that one day Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky
But I can't even keep these thoughts of you from passing by
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are
We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart
We must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are

And the master said that faith was gonna make the mountains move
But me, I tremble like a hill on a faultline just at the thought of how I lost you
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are
We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rageAnd with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart
We must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are

And if you make me laugh, I know I can make you like me
'Cause when I laugh, I can be a lot of fun
And when we can't do that, I know that it is frightening
What I don't know is why we can't hold on, can't hold on

It took the hand of God Almighty to part the waters and the sea
But it only took one little lie to separate you and me
Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are
Wouldn't you love to walk on the water, just don't stumble on the waves
Me, I want to go there something awful, but to stand there and take some grace
Because oh, we are not as strong as we think we are
No, we are not as strong as we think we are

A little more Elsie musical history here.  There were three songs that made me decide that Rich Mullins was my favorite singer and always would be: "Sometimes By Step," "Hold Me Jesus," and "Growing Young."  Back when all I had was "Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth" and "Brother's Keeper" (on the back shelf, before I fell in love with the album), one song made me decide to buy "Songs," and that was "Hold Me Jesus."  I can't even describe what it was like to hear that song for the first time.  I was a sixteen year old autistic kid with no bridge between the things tearing her apart inside and the real world before the line "hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf" built that bridge all by itself.  I heard "Hold Me Jesus" from a friend's compilation album in the summer, and it was winter before I bought "Songs."  And then I skipped all the way to the end just to loop the song I'd bought the album for.  Then I went back to the beginning and started listening.  I didn't like all the songs at first (and that's a pattern with me; my very favorite songs are the ones I skip the first time through).  "We Are Not As Srong As We Think We Are" captured me the very first time, though.  Because it was so slow and pretty, and for the line "I tremble like a hill on a faultline just at the thought of how I lost you."

Those two images became enmeshed with each other in my head, and to "tremble like a hill on a faultline" became the way to express a grief too deep for tears.  The first time I remember specifically using the line was when I said goodbye to my high school friend A.  She'd been a kind of project of mine -- our friendship consisted mostly of me cheering her on at her horse shows and helping her to shovel the stalls, then playing hours of Final Fantasy.  I tried out my ideas of Christian service on her and received my first rebukes at the condescending way I'd been taught to present.  And I think I did love her in a way.  It wasn't with the kind of raw emotional need I've felt later on in my life, but we had a connection.  And I felt sad when I said goodbye to her, knowing it would be the last time.

Here's what Rich had to say about "We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are" (link to the full concert below -- well worth listening to):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYN5AyBZhn4&list=PL49BDE2090F22FE67&index=9

I'll do a more recent song because I might remember it better.  It's the closest thing to a love song I've actually written in the last several years, because I don't date anymore so I don't need to write many, y'know, love songs.  Because they never worked very good anyway.  But uh, it always worries me listening to Christian radio occasionally, you get a little worried because if you were really tuned in to that stuff all the time, it would warp you.  I became alarmed at this lack of good breakup songs on Christian radio.  It's as if we were all part of Focus on the Family or something.  We didn't do that.  So, uh, me and Beaker decided to write one.  It's really hilarious because of all this Internet stuff.  I get all these letters from people trying to console me on my divorce.  I'm going geez, I haven't had a date in a decade, how can I get a divorce.  It's not really a personal story, it was just an exercise.  We decided we would try to make it hard for the other guy to rhyme, and that's how we wrote it.  But anyway, they played it on radio, so it must be okay.

Rich had a line in "Afraid of the Dark" that -- paraphrased -- goes, "I am no longer afraid of goodbyes; I have become so accustomed to them that it scares me."  I think I understand that line, for the first time in my entire life. 

Hmm.  Okay.  I was a very strange kid in that I've always -- as long as I can remember -- had this perspective that this life is only a very tiny slice and Eternity is going to be so much bigger and longer and more real.  So by that definition, goodbyes in this life are always temporary.  I've lost some family members along the way.  Never anyone who was extraordinarily close to me.  So I'm not sure how I'll react to real, immediate grief.  But I've always seen death that way ... just a passageway.  Just a door.  Temporary.  We have the great company of the saints who have gone before us around and behind, watching and cheering and praying and being intimately part of our lives.

The most important goodbyes when I was a child was with my cousins.  In general, I was a really lonely kid.  Every summer, my family took a road trip to visit my father's family in one state and my mother's family in another state.  The states weren't close to each other or our home, but involved several days in the car (hence I love songs like Andrew Peterson's "Venus").  We'd typically visit a week or so each place.  I speculated that those two weeks were only times I was truly alive.  I was really close to two of my cousins, one on my dad's side (which was more of a big-sister relationship), and one on my mom's side (which was more of an equals-relationship; I was a year older but I felt like she'd been through more).  This was before cell phones and free long distance.  It was also before I had an email account or was comfortable on the Internet (or used it anywhere besides the school library).  We tried paper letters, but those typically didn't go back and forth more than a couple of times during the year.  The goodbye at the end of the visit was a true goodbye, at least (to my teenaged brain) for an awfully long time.  I'd always console myself that eventually we'd all live in a place where there would be no more goodbyes.

During the very last such visit, my cousin just -- well, had a lot of stuff going on and felt like a bad hostess to me.  I finally forced the issue by saying that I felt like we were growing apart, and she sighed and said she'd give me a hug and walk me back to Grandma's.  I ... I guess kind of stumbled back numbly (I'm not sure what happened those first few hours), and, careful to be quiet, cried myself to sleep.  That kind of pain ... by its very nature has to be temporary.  I get to the point where I can't feel any more than I already do.  It's not that part that I don't understand.  It's the way that it settles into a quiet kind of grief that just stays.  I told myself that friendship was over.  It probably is, at least in this life.  I think by this point she and I have both accumulated too many scars to ever be able to reach across the chasm and connect in any way.  The part that I don't understand is the awful feeling that "this cannot be."  It's unthinkable that this hole will remain in my heart and life for the rest of my time on this earth because ... it just is.  It's not logical.  So some part of me (maybe the part that's still five years old) convinces myself that this isn't really goodbye -- that as much as it stinks, that the hole is my cross to carry for a time, but someday it will be lifted.  And with this particular friendship, that's still possible, not in this lifetime but in the next.

To me the "I have become so accustomed to goodbyes that it scares me" part comes when it stops hurting like that ... if that makes sense.  When the part of me that rebels and says that the 'goodbye' can't be forever because it just can't, because it's unthinkable, because ... it just can't be forever.  When that part of me gives up and accepts that sometimes there's no happy ending, sometimes love isn't enough, and sometimes scars can be permanent.  That's another bit that I can't understand.  I'm okay with scars remaining.  Scars are healed wounds.  I don't think that there's any horrible experience, any trauma, any flashback or nightmare or memory, that God can't heal someday.  I'm still on the fence as to whether He can do it without being able to touch me ... but that's a subject for another post (besides, that's a question to which I can always be picking up new information).  But I can't understand how God can make permanent goodbyes not-hurt.  The whole idea of "goodbye" is wrong.  It's part of this fallen world.  I picture building halls and rooms in my heart and life for each individual person who is part of it.  I can always build more.  But I can't take anything away.  And the more deep and close the relationship, the less likely that anyone else can inhabit another person's rooms.  I think that capacity and that individuality of relationship is inherently a good thing.  So the way that the empty echoing halls hurt is also inherently a good thing -- the problem isn't that the halls hurt, the problem is that the halls are empty.  That something good has been torn away.  Even if eventually there will be no more goodbyes, I don't understand how the ones that have already transpired can ever stop hurting.

I pick theme songs for events in my life.  It's kind of silly ... I guess ... but it's the way I relate to the world, and it is what it is and it's always been this way, so I just keep on doing it.  My song for separating from a couple of specific people in the "Xena" fandom is Mark Schultz' "Think of Me."  I don't have a song for separating from the entire fandom.  So as I began this post, I wondered if "We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are" could be it.

"I tremble like a hill on a faultline at the thought of how I lost you" is a very good description, actually.  I always have flashbacks, but the past couple of weeks have been insane, and I finally made a "Xena" angst video to try to shut up the flashbacks themselves.  With mixed results, I guess.  I'm no longer flashing to individual things, but now there's this generalized grief that kind of shows up and then recedes like waves in the ocean.  I'd thought that telling the stories would help a little, but it doesn't.

The truth is that absolutely nothing can fill the empty rooms left by the "Xena" fandom people.  They occupied an entire wing of my heart.  Nothing can recapture the crazy twisted sense of reality -- the pictures and philosophy and artwork, the interconnections, the feeling that I had an entire network all over the world who had my back, the service opportunities, the travel opportunities, our crazy inside language that I didn't even realize was a secret language until I'd slip and use one of the words in my everyday conversation and then have to explain it and run back to the board and post the story.  The way it felt to share music.  To hear Plumb's "Cut" for the first time, or Nightwish's "Sleeping Sun."  To have the weirdest things about my internal life exposed and understood all through writing which didn't seem weird, in public no less and yet to stand unashamed in the midst and to learn what it felt like to be proud of all the parts I'd always had to keep hidden.  To be a mediator, to think about interdynamics friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend.  To think nothing of buying others' plane tickets or fill gas tanks, to watch "Xena" interspersed with swimming or shopping or driving or sightseeing.  To dance until three in the morning at the convention, and not even have to deal with post-con-depression because I was too busy posting threads and pictures and reliving every moment of it.

I have much better and truer friends now, and I don't believe I have any secrets I've told to "Xena" people that I didn't also tell to someone else, someone still in my life.  It kind of hit home to me this weekend that my social life is full again ... maybe not like it was, maybe not like I'd like it to be, maybe I still feel horribly lonely ... but the fact is I have more than a lot of people do, and the friends I have are truer than many people ever experience.  It's ... I think it's impossible to fill that empty wing.  I don't have the time, I don't have the ability to trust, and some things are once-in-a-lifetime anyway.  But the fact that it will just remain empty forever is unthinkable.

"I have become so accustomed to goodbyes that it scares me."  Except ... I haven't.  I wonder sometimes if the fact that this is still unthinkable, so many years later, is actually a good thing ... it means I will never lose the capacity to love.  I just wish it didn't hurt so much.  Or feel so permanent.

She wishes she was with them, but she looks and they're not there.  Seems love comes for just a moment, and then passes on by.

--Rich Mullins, "Jacob and Two Women."