Hadden: Belfast Brought Back

There is an acute release of the soul which comes only when in the presence of one who knows you.

Not someone who has heard your story or your interests or work ethic or habits but someone who is able to discern your character, who is unwilling to misunderstand you.

They are not flippant and they take their time to study, so as to gather the whole picture before making judgments about who you are. Very few in any person’s life can go into this category.

Hadden is one of those people for me.

As the director of studies in Northern Ireland, he was the person who picked me and my team up at the airport during my very first visit (I sat by him the whole van ride to the manor and heard the story of how he fell in love with his wife Betty), and he was the person who was my stable ground when I moved. Though our visits were infrequent, he always approached me with love, with compassion, and with Christ.

There’s something about “old folk” I love and it’s this: they don’t give you no bull crap Christianity. 

Rather, it seems to pour out from a deep and still place and it resonates with truth inside the listener.

I heard a lot of bull during my struggle but never from Hadden, and I think that’s why I love him so. He listened, validated the truth of my words or weeded out the untruth, then redirected me to Christ but also to tea and a hug. It was not indulgent, but it was also not canned.

Hadden saw the ugliest, most pulpous parts of my wreckage, and yet, he trusts me, he loves me, and he always speaks truth over me.

Sometimes I forget who I am.

Who I am here, I feel, does not always reflect who I was there.

Perhaps it is because I did feel so lost and forgotten and silenced that I now find myself almost constantly talking, in a way that practically screams, “NOTICE ME NOTICE ME NOTICE ME”.

Do I want to be noticed or do I want to follow Christ?

Because, if I were to be totally honest with myself, when I was fully following the Lord, I was deep and still and quiet and, somehow, I was seen, though I didn't draw overt attention to myself (you know, being that I lived alone and for a long time had no friends). And now, when I am surrounded by others, I often feel more unknown and misunderstood and alone in my true self than I did then.

Part of that is how I have ceased to write. And part of that, as well, is that I am closer to “reality” than I was there. I am closer to the consequences of my own words, good or bad, than when I lived abroad and this nondistance is discomfiting.

Being known to the level which I desire takes a lot more time than my patience feels as though it can handle, which leads to a lot of explaining on my part. That, as you know, can never end well, as words, unlike consistent behavior over time, can bounce all kinds of directions in other people’s perceptions.

To be known is to have a voice without speaking.

And it’s as though I forget to trust that the Lord writes my reputation, not me. What will be will be, and nothing I can do is going to make me get ahead. All I can do is follow.

I’m pretty passive and a very good follower in so so many ways. That is not one of them.

What do I fear?

I fear that reverence to my true nature will lead me back to being alone, deeply alone. And sometimes, in a very human way, I don’t think it’s worth it.

Yeah, sometimes I really miss the immaculate times of tea and tears with God, but other moments, I do not remember those experiences clearly enough to want them over what I have now.

Then comes Hadden to speak in chapel this week. Hadden, whose friendship blossomed during a time when no one could hear me, and I remember how right and pure and exactly good and better than everything else it is to be someone who is known. To be known by man is precious; to be known by God is worth far more.