On Werewolves, Bricks, Florence Nightingale, and God’s Goodness
Hang on to your hat, dearies, the story that follows is unflattering.
Eyebrows may raise. Were this an episode of Friends, I’d call it: “The One Where Jon Ran Outside in his Underwear.” …BUT the story does ultimately end up at the goodness of God. So, bear with me as I walk you through one of the worst nights in the history of Jon Campbell:
Begin.
A few months ago, in the dead of some hot July night, I woke from sleep to find two uninvited guests waiting for me:
Anxiety and, his dear friend, Dread.
You may know them. And perhaps you can relate:
Ever woken up in the middle of the night, suddenly remembered something awful waiting for you the next day, and been like: “oh God, I don’t want to wake up.”? And then couldn’t decide whether you should just go back to sleep or stay awake because one option gets you tired but the other gets you closer to the thing you’re dreading?
It was one of those nights for me. A mountain of invisible anxiety-bricks dropped squarely on my chest and triggered hyperventilation.
My diaphragm clogged up like Atlanta rush hour on I-85. The air suddenly felt like lead. I started mouth-breathing, rushing through each heavy breath to get to the next. My heart accelerated, fists now making stress balls of the sheets. Then, I started to cry.
Okay, I started to sob is maybe more accurate.
…Some context? The day before at work was horrible. I’ll tell you about that soon, in my next article. But, for now, suffice to say that the work horrors were all courtesy of COVID. With the advent of COVID my job, which involves operating college residence halls (think 600-people hotels), was being blown up and reassembled into some Frankenstein thing I neither recognized, nor had the time, resources, expertise, or confidence to handle. I felt, in my humble opinion, that what was being asked of me (and all of us) at the dead last minute was honestly not possible.
Anyway…
Heat now tumbled liquidly down my cheek, pooling in the corner of my eye, then breaking over the bridge of my nose like water over a dam. I rolled over in place and locked eyes with the ceiling.
“Am I having a panic attack right now? ...Is that what this is?”
Part of me was embarrassed at myself. I shouldn’t be having a panic attack. I’m not weak.
I’m a MILLENNIAL. We have like zero emotional problems.
The other 99% of me didn’t care and kept panicking.
Aerie shot up, awake from hearing me:
“Jon?”
I didn’t respond.
“Babe?”
She recognized what was now happening and moved toward me quickly, laying her little arms over my shoulders and her head on my chest. She prayed quietly and urgently.
My brain convulsed.
Rapid-fire thoughts threw themselves against the walls in my head like the calamitous frenzy of a blender hurling sliced ingredients against its plastic shell.
“Why is this on me?
WHY IS THIS ON ME?”
Anger. Fear. Panic. Anger. Denial. Fight. Flight. Anger…
My convulsing brain’s thought-blending surged into hyper mode. Soon, things in my head ceased being distinguishable and homogenized into a non-descript emotional soup that began pouring from my ears:
“WHY IS THIS ON—"
Then,
Rage.
I shot out from Aerie’s arms, ejecting from our bed, and—man I feel dumb writing this.
…Quite literally ran through the dark to my front door. Threw it open. Angry-marched outside in my boxers. And screamed into the sky:
“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE YOUUUUUUUU”
Only, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, I didn’t say “fudge.”
Not only is yelling the word “fudge” not cathartic at all, I also wasn’t mentally prepared in that moment to pass my emotions through a family-friendly, let’s-act-holy filter.
Rabbit trail: is holiness in speech more about how we dress our words or what we send them off to do?
Either way, my words were not holy.
“FUDGE THIS PLACE.”
“FUDGE THIS PLACE.”
“FUDGE YOU.”
“WHY THE FUDGE—”
Lucky for me and the whole world, it was 4:30am in the middle of July so no students were on campus to witness the atomic mantrum I was having.
After firing off several more rounds of chocolate-covered curse words at God, at Emmanuel College, at God, at Emmanuel College, at God, at Emmanuel College, I decided—so rationally—that I needed to break something.
Yes, really. I needed to physically break something. As in, with my hands.
So, I found something.
A brick, lying helpless and alone near the Wellons Hall construction site. The brick was originally purposed for dorm renovations. Little did the brick know, I was changing its purpose this night. It was going to be a piece of a bigger and happier picture—a nice new building for college students who honestly deserved it. Now, the brick was laying in my war path.
Wrong place, wrong time for that brick.
I picked the poor thing up, hoisted it with both hands over my crazed midnight hair, and—screaming one final “FUUUUDGE YOUUU”—proceeded to Stone-Cold-Steve-Austin-pile-drive it straight into red powdery oblivion.
…Sigh. Not one of my finer moments. I’m sure I looked like a werewolf or something. Outside in the night, shirtless in my underwear, howling dreadfully at the moon. Smashing objects into the ground.
But the panic was legitimate. I know I’m telling this story rather dramatically and poking fun at myself. But truthfully, I’d never been more riddled with anxiety and anger than this moment in my life. What was happening to my job at work had me genuinely frenzied. And spoiler alert, the next 3 months would go as badly as my anxiety predicted they might.
How’s that for encouraging? Hey, ya know what: sometimes your anxiety is right!
Anyways, all this was unpleasant. What I shouted at God and at Emmanuel College—my home, my community, my work, and my ministry for the last 7 years—was equally unpleasant.
Sorry, God.
Sorry, Emmanuel College.
Love you both.
From here, I’ll end the story of my second-ever panic attack blandly.
When the powder settled, I decided the great Emmanuel College outdoors had probably seen enough of my bioluminescent skin to make its eyes bleed, and by that point I’d also woken up a whole battalion of mosquitoes. I also didn’t want the added guilt of having to tell my Apple watch that I wasn’t actually working out. So, I stumbled back inside, sobbed myself into exhaustion, and fell asleep with Erica clearly concerned about my mental health.
Alas.
A happy ending, there was not.
*womp, womp*
So, where was God’s goodness in it all?
When COVID-19 shoved me down a well of anger and threw an iron top over it?
When I mentally lost it on this hot night in dead July, spewing unholy fudge through the midnight air in violent reaction to the second panic attack of my life, whilst wearing only my skivvies. When I suplexed that poor brick into powdery oblivion.
When even now, writing this, I’m still wrestling with lingering anger about it all.
Dare I say: we’ve all got ugly nights like this under our caps. Doesn’t matter how holy any of us claim to be. When the pressure’s really cooking, holy people throw some of the fleshiest fits.
God’s not pretending it doesn’t happen. Why should we?
So. In our ugliness, where is God’s goodness?
That night, I saw it nowhere. I felt it nowhere. I only saw and felt my own anguish.
But, 3 months of continued anguish later, though I still feel tinges of anger clinging like residue to my psyche, I’m beginning to see God’s goodness…well, everywhere that night. An ironic shift in perspective because this was a night where my badness and life’s badness decided to hang out together and make a big, loud badness firework show.
But, here’s a thought: it only feels ironic to think of God’s goodness being all over that bad night because we tend to think of God’s goodness and our suffering as being mutually exclusive. In other words, when one is present, the other by default must be absent.
So, when I ask, “where is God’s goodness in this?” I’m not really asking a question so much as making an emotionally driven theological statement: “God, if your goodness was doing its job, I wouldn’t be suffering.”
Here’s the rub: biblically speaking, that’s just not accurate.
*waves at Job*
*waves at Jeremiah*
*waves at Mary*
*waves at Jesus*
…I know, I know. From an emotional standpoint, that’s not a consoling thought. God’s goodness coexisting with human suffering means that—not only can bad things happen to good people—but bad things can happen to good people even when they’re doing good things while standing squarely in the middle of God’s goodness.
It means that God’s goodness doesn’t orbit around our immediate happiness and success.
*The prosperity gospel in the back row is now moaning*
But, from a standpoint of hope—and I mean real hope, not this fragile wishing-for-luck thing we’ve culturally transformed hope into—this is one of the most consoling truths in all human existence.
The horrible nights we endure reveal something profound about God’s nature we simply can’t see when things are all peaches and cream: God’s goodness doesn’t just passively coexist with our suffering. It’s not standing stiffly in the room of our anguish with us, twiddling its thumbs, wishing for the awkward situation to end, watching woodenly whilst we blubber and blow snot bubbles and yelp dirty words.
No, on the contrary. God’s goodness actively co-experiences our suffering with us. And, further still, nurses us to recovery. And, further further still, makes meaning of it all.
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“The Lady with the Lamp”
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale, forerunner of modern nursing, earned her famed persona, “The Lady with the Lamp,” while ministering to wounded and dying soldiers during the brutal Crimean War. The following depiction of Florence shared in a mid-1800s British newspaper, The Times, captures a glimpse of how God’s goodness responds to us in our anguish:
“She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.”
Later, Henry Wadsorth Longfellow commemorated Florence’s merciful form in a poem of his, “Santa Filomena:”
Thus, thought I, as by night I read
Of all the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp, —The wounded from the battle-plain
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
…God’s goodness is like this.
It searches for us in our cheerless corridors, bearing in the cold darkness a lantern of mercy and hope. And when we’re found in our “glimmering gloom,” it comes and sits in the ashes with us. It tears its robes as we do. When blood begins dripping out our foreheads, it reminds us that Gethsemane is yet a garden. A place precious to a loving Father who has not abandoned us. A garden that produces through pain a fruit of faith unlike anything found in golden fields of bliss. A garden which one day will make way for that better, everlasting Garden. A perfect place to which, despite our present agony, we soon go.
“Gethsemane is yet a garden.”
So, where in my embarrassing panic attack was God’s goodness?
3 months later, I’m able to see it:
…His goodness was there, in the tears rolling down my cheek. Breaking over the bridge of my nose. Granting liquid permission to put striving aside and own my weakness honestly.
…His goodness was there, draped over me in my wife’s arms and whispered prayers, when she covered me with her tired, little, sleepy self.
…God’s goodness was there, hoisted high above my head in the brick that laid down its life to grant me a single, cheap pulse of cathartic relief.
…God’s goodness was there, in the clouds and moon and stars who leaned down and listened quietly as I raged and cursed the One I love most and the gifts He’s given me.
To borrow and re-apply Paul’s words, I lived and moved and had my being that night inside God’s goodness.
Because God himself was there, lantern lit, sitting with me in my ash pile. He made his home with me in my house of misery. And though my misery would continue for some months after this night, He did indeed cover me with His warmth and fill my aching world with his mercy—never once needing my recognition.
Never once leaving my side.
Dear friend and reader: whatever your pile of ash, whatever your house of misery, God’s goodness isn’t absent. Though it can be impossibly hard to see, your suffering draws his goodness even closer. He’s unoffended by your weakness. He’s not shocked or repulsed by your ugliness. When anxiety has made you entirely unimpressive, God sends his goodness to assuage your hurting heart and nurse your throbbing wounds.
Whether you can feel it or not, I pray that you would cling to this by faith:
He’s as good now as he was when you last knew it.
As close now as when you last felt it.
As pleased with you now as when you last felt pleased with yourself.
Bless you as you suffer.
