Martha Marvin, May 2, 2020
The coronavirus has brought me face to face with my journals, the question of what to do with them, and the unsettling fact that I will die. More than fifty-five thousand Americans have died from the virus already. When I die, I don’t want my family to read my journals and know the anguish I went through. Or do l? Perhaps they might have more compassion for me then, but what good is that?
It’s been said that one cannot love intensely in one direction without loving in all others. If nothing else, I loved intensely. Or maybe I emoted intensely, but it was all out of a sense of wanting to love and be loved.
So much good has happened since the tumultuous days before I was diagnosed with manic depression in my early forties. For long stretches of time, however, depression seemed to consume me. When I did feel joy it seemed illusive, a brief breath of fresh air. I do carry some regret and sadness. That’s because I know our two children were forever scarred by the early years of their lives—years with an emotionally unstable mother and emotionally distant father. Their teen years certainly were painful. But there was joy and there was love. I know it at my core.
I suspect these will raise their heads like sparklers in the deep of night if I keep my journals and read them. But what angst will I have to endure to come upon that light? Then again, maybe I will become more compassionate toward myself. Today.
In one box of my journals I came across a folder of love letters and keepsakes from a young man I dated in college. As I looked through this folder from that romance, a clear recollection of the delight of first love surged within me. He taught me by example what Divine love looked like. I must have known something of it myself; his letters reveal that I did. His affection and intellect, his carefree spirit, and knack for writing lyrics and music—the thrill of dancing—all of these came tumbling through my mind as tears of joy welled up inside me. They spilled like colorful glass marbles falling from a tin on the table.
Falling, they merrily bounced across the floor of my mind. The clanging of the lid and the empty tin gave percussion, awakened me from a long sleep. Where had my joy gone all those years, since college days? Perhaps I had idealized them. I recalled too, that this young man was way too unconventional for me; for him, I was likely too tame. That day I woke up to the reality that I must rekindle my joy myself. It runs deep. It is a spark within me. I am learning that I must mine for it, nurture something of it every day of my life.
I am now sixty. I will be sixty-one in two weeks. Will I carry these journals into the next year? Will I even live to see my next birthday? Will I give this to my beloved, tender husband of thirty-one years and ask him to read it? We haven’t been angry with each other for a very long time. Or would it be more loving not to share this with him? These thirty-one years have shown us both something of what it means to “know the length and depth, the height and width of God’s love in Jesus Christ,” as the Apostle Paul wrote in one of his prayers to the early church in Ephesus.
Maybe I will shred my journals, content with these reflections and revelations and the great healing they have afforded me. After all, I’ve found certain light where I’d thought there was only uncertain darkness. No, I’ve found both light and darkness, and it is all good.
Perhaps I will peruse my journals, two by two, then place them on the ark of my bookshelves. Let the rains come, then a rainbow. Then let the flowers blossom. Maybe I’ll put this journal entry with them, hoping and praying that it will serve as an introduction to whoever finds them. May there be forgiveness. May there be love. May there be joy!
Rev. Martha Marvin, a Presbyterian minister, is the pastoral care minister at Marymount Convent in Tarrytown, New York. She grew up in Michigan. In 1991 she moved with her family to Westchester County, New York, where they still reside.
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