Shades of Grey

When I was in college I asked my friend Joshua what his favorite color was. "Grey," he said. "What? You can't say grey! Grey isn't even a color--it's a non-color." "I don't care, I like it."

At the time my favorite color to look at was aqua and my favorite color to wear was fuchsia.  I just could not wrap my head around someone loving a color, that in all actuality seemed like a void to fill with something brighter, not an answer in itself. Who on earth could love the color grey, I thought.

I guess, at the time, I had a similar relationship to other things that did not produce radiance. Loss, grief, pain, suffering.  You lost someone you love? There must be a reason for it, a deeper meaning that we just can't see. Your heart is broken? Don't worry, you'll have an even better story to tell when the "right" person comes along. You cut off your toe? I'm very sorry. Excuse me while I cover the wound with a neon green band-aid as you contract gangrene and I pretend like it's healed and worth shouting praises about.

And I stood, confused at the chaos around me when people accepted my words and smiles and affirmation to my face and then went home, still suffering, still confused. I couldn't understand why the pinks and greens and yellows I'd used to cover over my grey and brown areas weren't bright enough or strong enough for other people. I thought: what is so different about me, so strange about me, that I can find colors in the dark? Truth be told, I put myself on a pedestal. Convinced of my ultra-Christianity in a world full of people who just couldn't see well enough to enjoy the shine.

But as time went on, and I found myself forging new paths and moving on to uncharted territory. Slowly, over time, the colors seemed to wash away quicker than they had before, and for awhile I fought hand in fist to paint those colors on, brighter, brighter, ever brighter.

But the places were new and the people were new, and the hardships were new and lonely and they didn't know me and my neon color patches. And they didn't have any new colors to give me, and the old ones just kept washing away. And so I started to experiment with less color. What would happen? Would I survive? Less and less and less until I looked down, and had to admit to myself (but only when I was alone), that in fact the hurt was deep and dark and black, with occasional shades of grey.  No wonder the colors couldn't cover it anymore. What color can cover black? And I was angry. Maybe I didn't have any answers after all. Was it ok that I didn't have any answers?

So I started a journey. I sought out others who had been through hard things. I sought out persons and stories and struggles of the worst kind. Abuses and injustice and  atrocities abounded as soon as I started looking. I really didn't have to look far at all. And some of those hard things were so incomprehensible that no color could cover over the vastness of their suffering. And some of them never really tried. And this I couldn't understand. This changed everything. Where was the meaning? Where were the answers? Where was the thing worth striving for?

And is it possible to believe in joy and hope in the midst of crushing all-consuming suffering? Suffering that has no answers except time. Time and prayer and tears and pain and time. Is it possible to believe in peace when your soul has been trampled on, by absolutely no fault of your own? Is it possible to repair the mangled and ripped apart pieces that were buried when they became unrecognizable? And what color could possibly fit over them? What answer is there, in the midst of all those questions?

I don't have the answers.

I believe that God heals, piece by piece, bit by bloody bit. But sometimes that healing doesn't look at all radiant, sometimes it just looks peaceful for a minute, for a split second, before it goes back to being painful. Don't blink, it's there.

Every few years, I look back on my life and think about how naive and narrow minded I was a few years ago. Because now, irony of ironies, my favorite colors are brown and grey. Instead of seeing an emptiness that should be filled with something radiant and shocking, when I look at brown tones and grey tones now I see a non-assuming warmth that is just content with being warm. Fluidly whole and consistently solid. Rather than boring, it looks peaceful. Content. Stunning to no one, but enough, in and of itself, to give light and life.