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Harold L. Myra
January 1, 1989
Money crises. A child's tragic death. Forced exits. The topics in this issue can churn up currents of melancholia. Few of us find it easy to live with life's nasty facts.
A personal incident: one night as my wife, Jeanette, and I lay in the dark, nearly asleep, she said, "Somewhere in the world, right now, someone is having a baby." Jeanette's tone of voice clearly indicated her love of babies and the process of having babies.
"Yes," I replied, "and today in the U.S., fifteen teenagers committed suicide and four hundred attempted it."
Jeanette was jolted. "That's the difference between us," she said. "I think of something beautiful-like having a baby-and you think of terrible things."
She was right, and I felt sad. What a drag I can be. I recalled author Walter Wangerin's recounting his courtship with Thanne, who made him want to laugh; she made him happy despite his "characteristic tendency toward gloom."
When I read his confession of gloominess, I felt relieved. I wasn't the only one. But that was little comfort. Are all of us gloomy spouses put with lively women to douse their joie de vivre? The stories of tortured poets and authors-and legions of pastors-often involve long-suffering mates.
Strange, the roots of gloominess. The brutal scenes of an outrageous world that so often cloud my spirits come, in fact, from my dismay at the loving Father's world run amuck. At times, it seems the giant smokestacks of Auschwitz, with children hanging by their necks from scaffolds, form a massive mural in my mind. It blends with TV clips and photos of today's children brutalized in wars, and children cast broken into America's city streets. It's no Sunday school curriculum. Reality is ugly.
Yet my rational mind also insists that those images ...
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