DEEP QUESTIONS IN A DARK FOREST
the odyssey chronicles
There I was, sitting alone on a fold out chair with my dog Banks by my side. Sipping on a fresh cup of coffee I had just brewed over the fire, I was enjoying the total silence. The still and calm that morning was something very new. The air was crisp and the woods were beautiful. It was early October, and the weather was perfect for camping. The fire was just starting to build up some steam and I could feel the heat on my legs through my jeans. There were only a few noises that caught my attention. One was my dog, snoring loudly next to the chair. He had spent the entire night rummaging around in the woods looking for who knows what. He would breathe in deep, hold it for a second and it would whistle as it came out his nose. It reminded me of the cartoons I watched as a kid. I noticed the sounds of the birds in the trees and the small animals moving near me through the leaves. I could feel and hear my breath going in and out. I could feel my heart beating slowly in my chest as I raised the cup up to my lips. I sat there quietly, enjoying the silence. For the first time in a long time there was nothing that I needed to do. No one was expecting me anywhere, no one even knew where I was. Before this trip I was searching for something that I didn’t know how to ask for. I spent a lot of time searching for “it” through multiple different avenues. Each of them however, ended up in the same place. The only way I figured I could find it was to be alone. I had to remove the noise and focus on the issue, the only continuous stimulus in each situation, me. So this is exactly what I did.
I was in a part of Kentucky called Land Between the Lakes, LBL for short. It is a section of land in the middle of two man-made lakes in western Kentucky. I planned this trip out as more of a forced come to Jesus meeting with myself than a vacation. In order to get the most out of it I knew I needed to be alone, really alone. I left my phone in the car, hiked long enough that I wasn’t able to comfortably escape to my car in the middle of the night and set up camp.
Now for most of us the thought of camping alone is nothing short of bonkers. To tell you the truth I thought it was too. I was not sure that leaving my phone behind was a good idea but I wanted to feel what it was like to be totally alone. Totally removed from any stimulus that might take me away from my goal. I wanted to be forced to deal with the guy in my head. I wanted and needed to know him better. At the end of the day I knew this was the only way I was going to be able to find out if my life could change or if I was stuck with what I saw as a never ending spiral downward.
The years previous were absolute chaos. A divorce after almost ten years of marriage, which I labeled as all my fault, a court order forcefully limiting time with my three daughters, a series of useless relationships, drinking heavily almost daily and doing my best to escape any type of pain. I wanted more from life than this. I wanted more from myself at this point in my life. I knew the only person that needed to get their shit straight was me.
I was tired of running.
As a kid my family was heavily involved in the Southern Baptist church. We were the family that was at church anytime the doors were open. Church plays, concerts, choir, mission trips and everything in-between. Christianity, especially the southern baptist version of it, advocates the concept that you should die to yourself daily. I.e. your wants are worldly and evil so don’t pursue them. The biggest concept that was mixing my brain up heavily was that we are inherently evil. I struggled with this ever since I was old enough to understand the concept. The focus is understandable, if God is all powerful and all knowing then we need to get out of his way and let him guide us. This was something, no matter how hard I tried, that I could never wrap my head around. After my divorce I spent hours crying on the floor at church. Literally laid down on the floor in the sanctuary praying out loud for God to save me from my wicked self. I would constantly ask for God to change me, make me different. I went from pleading for God to change me to being angry at why he made me such a fuck up. Why was my life like this if he made me in his image? Why did I want the things I wanted? Why was I going through this if he had some almighty awesome plan for me? Why was it all “refining fire” and no outcome?
I asked the same questions for years. I wanted to be better or at least see that I was headed in the direction of “better”. I wanted this almighty being to come into my life and change my habits and form a “new life”. I need you to understand where my head was at during all this. Years and years of learning how evil we are as humans and how we are one step away from eternal damnation is hard to handle. It’s also extremely hard to conceptualize as a kid. It accesses a fear beyond anything we can rationally imagine and generates fear based responses. “Fear God”, “Know and fear the almighty”, “The lion and the lamb” are all predicated on fear. Do we fear what we don’t know so we can learn to understand it? I went through years of heavy guilt because I wasn't able to jump on the baptist/christian logic train. When I was in those woods I was at a point where the guilt and fear was at its peak. I was either going to meet Jesus in those woods or I was going to break free of this poisonous lie that was dominating my life. I had no idea what 24 hours alone in the woods would do for my brain, my soul and my thought processes. I went into the woods broken, lost and wildly emotional.
I came out of the woods a different man.
The first few hours out there were beautiful. Trudging through the leaves playing fetch with Banks. Looking at the fall colors in the trees and enjoying the process of setting up camp. The smell was amazing, the crip air stung my nose as I breathed in. I was very focused on the tasks at hand, finding a camp sight and getting everything ready to go. Once I got everything set up and the fire started I sat down. I set up my french press coffee maker for my first cup of coffee. I had beef stew planned for dinner and some club crackers, so I was all set. This is where things went sideways, or at least got very deep very fast.
It all started with me feeling like I needed to check my phone constantly. It was amazing how nerve racking not being able to open my social media or check my messages was. I kept telling myself, “it's one night Chris, chill out”. But irrational thoughts of my daughters being injured or my house catching on fire were racing through my head. This started a domino effect of emotional battle axes to my noggin. One after the other, every emotion was heavy. I was jumpy at any sound that was happening around me. I felt like the nerves all over my body were on fire. I was violently anxious, I knew was missing something important or that someone needed me right that second. I felt like I was letting everyone I loved down, that people were depending on me and I was not there. I would stand up and walk around for 45 minutes or more at a time. I was amazed at the power this device had over my brain and my absolute inability to detach from that little world. This stress pushed me into paranoia. Small sounds triggered my fight or flight response instantly. I kept telling myself that this was just my body going through withdraws from the stimulus I had created. I knew removing myself from the world I was so drenched in would be hard, but I wasn’t prepared for how hard.
I finally sat down after several hours of walking and thinking and started to write down what I was feeling. I filled pages of my journal with my thoughts. I unloaded my mind in that book. Every emotion I felt, every angry word I wanted to say and everything in between. I had nothing to do but write. I broke down and cried heavily several times. I didn’t understand the emotions at all, it was wild. It felt like I was covered in regret, anger and frustration. It felt like everyone I loved was massively disappointed in me and everything I was. It was at the lowest point in my life I had ever been.
There I was, sitting in a chair in the middle of the woods weeping. I don’t know if I would have helped me if I would have stumbled across me like that. After what felt like five hours of writing, I was exhausted, I felt numb. I reheated my cup of coffee and sat there. I stared into the dark woods imagining what animals were out there watching me by this fire. I wiped off my face and sipped my reheated coffee. Sitting there in silence. The fear of the unknown in the woods was no longer there. I was void of emotions at this point and this is when I felt a different person emerge.
i broke something that was inside of me, or at least through something that was holding me back. i no longer felt that emotions were happening to me, i felt like i was watching them.
I was so exhausted from unloading everything I had held on to for years that it removed my ability to spend any more energy on feeling. It was like I was watching myself sit in that chair. I stared into the forest for what felt like an eternity. Slowly drinking my coffee. I sat there thinking about what my life. Thinking about the decision I had made, the people I hurt and the people I have helped. I thought about the kind of life I wanted for my daughters, what kind of life I wanted to live and who I wanted to be.
I kept thinking about the last pastor I talked to about a week before all of this. I remember coming into this office with my Bible in hand and him making a joke about me carrying it. “Keep that around and you might make better decisions”. “Give it to Jesus” was his famous line. If he didn’t have an answer, like most religious people I was seeking guidance from, he would repeat that statement. I remember not being able to rationalize any real applicational knowledge from that statement and the frustration it caused inside of me. I remember hearing stories of awesome things happening because the individual “gave it to Jesus” and were blessed. I also remember people saying “ah, well looks like you didn’t pray hard enough” when it didn’t work out. The issue was that I was trying to rationalize an irrational concept. After this emotional brain dump in the woods, I was able to see it clearly. The concept wasn’t that God hated some and loved others. Or that we are all inherently evil and deserve ultimate punishment for our sins. The concept is that we, as humans, have zero idea why bad things happen. We want to rationalize it with grand concepts like God’s infinite wisdom so we can give horrible things some context, some reason. It allows us to gain control over it. If we can’t rationalize it or put some silly label on it, it forces us to live in the unknown. We will do anything to avoid the chaos of the unknown. We are so desperate to rationalize our existence that we ignore the fact that we exist at all. The statement “give it to Jesus” is just a way to give action to something you have no control over.
I was deep in this trap. A trap that told me I was somehow misguided and broken beyond belief. I was lost in this wicked world of sin destined for life in hell if I didn’t constantly confess and beg for guidance. As I sat there thinking about the two times I was baptized and the four times I was “saved”, I began to laugh. I was trying to fulfill a void not created by me, but created by those around me. I was told from a young age that life here on earth was for serving, giving and dying to yourself. I was told that every day you have to wake up, start with apologizing for your sinful nature and then hope that this almighty power would give you a sliver of blessing to make the day not suck. And if it did suck it’s because you needed it and you should be thankful for it. Of course I was where I was. Not only did I expected it, I put the bear trap on my leg and stepped on it! I subconsciously expected my life to be full of turmoil and pain because I was told from childhood that life is just turmoil and pain!
The concept that I was this broken animal needing help was beyond my understanding. All I could see were humans doing amazing things. Building skyscrapers, cars, planes and traveling into space. We are constantly testing the limits of our abilities and are constantly expanding our reality of what is possible. How could we be destined for damnation when we were able to create so much happiness? So much good has come from so many people that it was just a wild concept to lump everyone into the same category as mass murderers or rapists. We spend so much time focused on this ethereal end game we miss the beauty and power around us.
I came to this conclusion, sitting in my chair, drained of emotion.
We are not subject to any concepts or ideas that we don’t willingly bring into our lives.
I sat there, sipping my coffee, listening to the sounds around me. Paying attention to everything I was previously ignoring. I was so focused on myself that I missed the power and beauty around me. I spent a while sitting there enjoying it all before I went to bed. I slept hard, probably 10 hours total. When I woke up I felt like an elephant was removed from my chest. I was able to sit in silence with no pain, no stress of missing out or struggle.
I slowly packed everything up, and walked slowly back to my car. On the way I played fetch with my dog several times and took about a hundred detours. I loaded up my car, my dog jumped in and we left. I had no missed calls, no text, no social media anything.
the fear i battled my whole life, from god to people was completely made up. that same fear was left in those woods.
We are not subject to any concepts or ideas that we don’t willingly bring into our lives. We are the deciders of our fate. We are the commanders of our ships. We have the power to adjust our environments and our habits. Our ability to look inside ourselves, to ask those ugly questions and to unpack our decision making processes is our superpower, our supernatural connection to the universe and our souls. Unpack that duffle bag of thoughts and get it on paper. Once you do you will be able to understand what it is to be the observer of our feelings, not the feeler. You will free yourself from the noise.
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