Blood and Wild Raspberries
by Hannah Doorenbos
Blood and Wild Raspberries
Every morning I would wake up and open my eyes with a sense of sick dread deep in my stomach. And within seconds my brain would start going. What’s wrong with you? How can you just wake up in this warm bed, safe and fed? There is suffering in the world, people are dying. People are homeless. 10% of the world lives in extreme poverty. 10%. Almost a billion. 10%. Hundreds of children starve to death daily. And you just walk around, smiling and laughing. And if eternity is real, then what? If you believe that Hell is real and people are there, how can you even wrap your brain around that? How can you ever be happy? Should you even be happy? Should you even be thinking about your own feelings about the topic when Hell exists and people are there? Can you justify wasted time spent playing games with friends and money spent on coffee in the face of all this stuff? People are starving and dying and rotting and you just keep on going with your life. What does this say about your soul? Because “If anyone born of God does not keep on sinning,” and if you’re someone wasting your life away, well….well what to do with that? None of your giving or sharing about your faith or serving is ever going to be enough. You freaking selfish coward.
I would climb out of bed and lay on the floor, waiting for the morning wave to wash over me, in hopes that the spinning in my head would stop. It never did. Needless to say, my thought life was a bit draining.
Something had cracked inside me during the Thanksgiving break of 2021. It started as a hairline fracture, barely perceptible. I started the break low-level anxious, but I couldn’t quite tell why. Slowly, I started to notice that it would get worse in the morning when I would read my Bible. I would make my coffee, sit by the warm fire, wrap up in a blanket, crack open my Bible, and slowly fill with existential dread. Each day it turned up a notch, like an ever-growing itch in my brain that I couldn’t shake away. Black Friday everything shattered. I found myself sitting on the floor of my grandparents' house, crying, clenching the shag carpet, full of guilt and anxiety, feeling like death. When the worst of it passed, I tried to shake off the experience, figuring the worst of it was over. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
Over the rest of the rest of the semester, it got even worse. I tried to shove it down and act normal, but I couldn’t hold it together long. My mom soon took to glancing at me, concerned, often. It only got more and more intense during Christmas break.
I was leading a Bible study for my campus ministry at the time, and we were assigned 1 John for the spring. To my freaked-out self, 1 John seemed like it was chock-full of condemnation. Sure, you’re saved by grace but “anyone born of God will not keep on sinning”. I messed up all the time. And I had seen growth in my spiritual life but, whoever says they know him but doesn’t obey his commandments is a liar. A liar. Sure I tried, but how would I know if I did enough to be obedient to those commandments? And “whoever abides in Christ will walk like him”. How could I even be close to walking like my perfect savior? I would read it again and again but could just never make sense of it. 1 John ruminated in my brain.
I realized just how screwed up everything had become when I found myself crying in a creative writing class. I’m not usually much of a crier. Like maybe I’ll shed a tear once every few months or so. But one day in class, I was praying instead of writing, and like usual, found myself begging for answers and terrified. The classroom started fading into the background and my heart started pounding in my ears. My vision grew blurry and to my horror, I discovered it was tears filling up my vision. Frantically, I wiped at my eyes and glanced around. What if someone saw? Pull it together you freaking idiot. You’re already a wreck, you don’t need more people wondering what’s going on with you. You can barely even explain all this stuff to other Christians. You think this is going to make any kind of sense to people? There is no logical reason that this is happening. You should be fine. It was infuriating that I couldn’t get my crap together.
To my relief, no one seemed to notice. I took some deep breaths and stared down at my desk, trying to get myself under control. The second the minute hand hit the fifty, I was on my feet and out the door. I promised myself that there would be no more crying in public. Unfortunately, I found myself crying the next day in that class too. And the next. And the next.
If I was Catholic I’m pretty sure I would have dropped out of school and become a nun. Anything to stop having to make decisions about how to use my time and money. I was desperate to open guilt’s grasp. I probably would have been prime recruitment for a cult during that period of my life. I seriously debated selling everything that I had and moving somewhere to serve the poor. But I knew I wouldn’t be doing that out of love or care but guilt and self-preservation. Not to mention the savior complex that was driving that decision. I’d be wiping the outside of a golden cup filled with mold and cockroaches. Resounding gongs and clanging cymbals. I couldn’t make my heart change. I was trapped.
I had experienced a crisis of faith before. In high school, like many teenagers, I had realized that I didn’t know why I believed what I believed, where the Bible came from, or if there was any logical reason to believe in God at all. So I researched and thought and asked questions. This would lead to more questions which would lead me to more research and more thinking and even more questions. And after all that digging I came out with solid answers. I had a bedrock for my life.
This experience was not like that. I looked for answers to questions, for connection to people who had dealt with similar things, for what I was supposed to do with all this stuff inside. I learned a ton about theology, church history, the state of the world, and something called scrupulosity, which is basically religious OCD. I probably learned more information during that time than I did during my 5 previous semesters of college combined. All of it did essentially nothing. With every new question, every new fear, another inch of air was sucked out of my lungs. And no amount of answers could force that air back in. Despite the lack of comfort answers brought, I couldn’t figure out what else to do. And so I read and researched and begged for hours on my knees, laying before God, trying to hold to no condemnation and new creation. Looking for answers and comfort through endless research became kind of an obsession. In class, at work, in all my free time, and late into the night. I couldn’t stop.
Even though I was scared and suffering I couldn’t walk away. Because after all my thinking and research, and experience, I believed it. I believed that God was real and the Bible true, and that walking away from my faith wasn’t going to change reality. And that fact made me feel like throwing up and or crying all the time. I was trapped in this thing that felt like it was killing me. I felt like the mighty hand of heaven had rested a thumb between my shoulder blades and was pushing me down, down, down, grinding me into dust. Every sermon and book and article seemed to tell me I was failing, that I was never doing enough, that there was so much suffering everywhere, and I needed to do something about all of it. That I couldn’t possibly really be living the life God was calling me to. Each demand to be more was like another chunk of cement in the pack on my back. Because how could the God of the universe, who died for me, not want more from me, expect world change from me? And I knew myself. I couldn’t do what was asked.
In the thick of it, I rolled out of bed one day, cried, called my mom, and prayed to die. I was stuck on a verse that talked about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit being the unforgivable sin. I had seen the verse and, bam! Like being told not to think of a pink elephant, my brain immediately filled up with vile stuff about the Holy Spirit. I’m going to Hell. I’m going to Hell for sure. I couldn’t breathe. It seemed like even my cement dorm room walls were closing in on me. I tried to stand up but found out my legs had just been switched off. I can’t take this anymore. If I was going to spend eternity in Hell, I might as well get it over with. I just couldn’t deal with all this, with feeling like God hated me, like I was about to be smitted all the time, like it would never be enough to be obedient no matter how much I did. So I begged God to end it. I asked that if I was going to Hell, God would kill me by the end of the day. That whole day felt like the second right before getting hit by a car. You see the car speeding towards you, horrified, but there's nothing you can do about it but brace for the hit. When I woke up the following day, I didn’t know whether to be excited or disappointed. I started praying for joy that morning.
Slowly, after a few months of being completely wrecked, I started to settle into a quiet dread. The lowest pits got shallower; it was no longer impossible seeming to get up in the morning; I didn’t cry in every class. I could summon up a smile. Sometimes when I hung out with my family I felt happy. I could occasionally open my Bible without feeling like throwing up. I tried my best to check out and try to numb things the best I could. I shoved all the misplaced guilt, scrupulosity, and broken theology into the back of my mind, where it faded into a sickening but quiet buzz. I was able to live my life, for the most part. Emotionally things still sucked, but, still, it was better, sort of. I figured that the rest of my life was just going to feel like garbage. There was nothing I could do about it.
On the first day of camp orientation, it snowed about two feet. Heavy snow was not something this midwesterner expected in late May, so I didn’t have a coat or boots as I made my way up to one of the hangout areas. Not yet acclimated and carrying my hefty backpack, I gasped for air. When I finally reached the building, there was thankfully no one else there to see me. I fell back into a drooping couch and tried to catch my breath for a bit. When several minutes had passed, I started pacing nervously around the room. Being alone in silence still sent me spiraling. My life crisis had continued into the summer, unfortunately, but not surprisingly. I was a bit concerned about spending my whole summer teaching and discussing the Bible, a book that still felt like it was killing me most of the time. I had committed though, so there I was, nervous and cold.
I was startled when the door cracked open and the wind whipped in. A girl with curly hair and a smile stood in the doorway. She was soon followed by a blonde guy with the frame of a football player. Then a girl with stick-straight brown hair. We sat stiffly and started making small talk. Over the next several hours the people I would spend my life with for three months began to file in. Friendships with these people would prove to be some of the sweetest of my life so far. We went over names, hometowns, and majors probably ten times as people filled in. At one point someone asked, “How many pillows do you think you could consume in 24 hours if your life depended on it?” This led to an in-depth conversation about if you could burn or shred the pillows before eating them. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and listening to our director tell his best camp stories.
The next day the shoveling started. We were in charge of meals, dishes, and keeping the trails clean during orientation. It seemed like every time we got a trail clean it would start to snow again. So we blasted music and kept on digging. A few days in, I found myself singing along. That hadn’t happened in a long time. I had forgotten what it was like. We spent most of the next two weeks shoveling snow, drinking insane amounts of hot chocolate, training, and eating together. One day we made an igloo, another day we went tubing. Life became a rhythm of hard work and good rest. I found myself forgetting about the shadow of lurking guilt.
Most mornings started off with a devotional from the staff. One, in particular, stuck with me. This one line from Psalm 121 just kept running through my head. “I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” For some reason, that verse just would not leave my head. Every time I looked up to the ridges at the edges of camp it would dance around my brain.
On the day the first session of kids showed up, I questioned my ability to do the job. I was a counselor for the high school program, where kids would come up to stay at camp for five weeks, basically as half campers, half volunteers. The high school kids and counselors ran the kitchen, cleaned, served meals, ran the boathouse, and did outdoor maintenance. 60 high schoolers in one very small room were earsplitting loud, completely chaotic, and skunk of B.O. They grew on me pretty quickly though; I had forgotten how messy and honest and funny high school kids are. I loved getting to lead them in Bible study and work crew. I was an outdoor counselor, so I spent most of my time leading the kids in trial maintenance, building fences, moving logs, doing trash runs, or whatever random thing the property caretaker asked us to do. Most of these kids had never done manual labor before, so it was frequently a bit of a challenge for them. I had a couple of kids who fell asleep at lunch pretty often. But getting to see the look on their faces when they built something with their own hands, and did it well, was something else.
I had also forgotten how much high schoolers had going on in their lives. Most of them had no idea how to deal with all of their feelings. We’d all just be sitting at lunch talking about llamas and a girl would casually drop her biggest life trauma or deepest hurt. They would tell me and the other counselors about their pain, their families, about their fears. And for the most part, I couldn’t do anything about any of it. I could care for the kids, encourage them, and try to keep them safe at camp, but that was it. All that was left was prayer. I started to realize that prayer was no little thing.
When I found out that the staff Bible study and the camper Bible study were through 1 John, I inwardly groaned. I felt like 1 John had been tormenting me the whole previous semester. “Anyone born of God will not keep on sinning” still frequently kept me up at night. It was my job though, so, reluctantly, I started digging into it. To my shock, it was like I was reading with brand new eyes. If before I felt like 1 John was punching me in the face, now it felt like 1 John was picking me up off the floor. Suddenly I saw that the warnings and calls to self-reflection came with assurances and the love of God. 1 John said both “anyone born of God will not keep on sinning” and “if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves”. It said “whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” and that the letter was written, “that you may know that you have eternal life”. It said that we aren’t meant to live in endless intense repetitive questioning. It said the core of Christianity really is repent and believe. That real grace wasn’t earned.
There’s something about living on a mountain that makes you feel small. Every morning I’d wake up, start my walk to the shower house and look up to peaks towering over me. I’d be driving logs around and glance up to be dwarfed by Pikes peak. I’d hike a peak only to be in the shadow of a taller peak in the distance. On one of my days off, some other counselors and I hiked this mountain called Quandary. It’s something like 14,000 tall. After getting soaked, a little lost, and realizing just how scared of falling to my death I was, I found myself staring off the edge of a peak. I had never seen such a far distance before. There were whole little worlds as far as the eye can see. Trees and towns were scattered in a blanket of green and gray. I lift my eyes up to the mountains. I was a speck, smaller than a speck. I was as likely to move that mountain myself as I was to shut off the sun. The world was big and I was not. I was not God. What a beautiful, full breath of air.
The wildflowers started growing in June. I was driving the truck down past girls’ camp, singing along to whatever weird or emo song the kids had added to the playlist. My crew was really into Jojo Siwa’s “Boomerang” at the moment. That’s when I first noticed them. I had never seen flowers like this before. They were all colors and shapes, each its own unique beauty. There were fields full of these flowers. I pulled over and stared. In that orange, dead mountain dirt mixed with rocks, little flowers were growing. They pushed through stone just to deliver a simple little treasure.
The wild raspberries started growing in July. Thousands of little red berries just appeared along most of the paths. Any non-melon fruit was in limited supply on the mountain, so these berries were a treat. There were so many that in some places you didn’t even have to look. You could just reach into the bushes and come out with handfuls. I’d eat them throughout the day, as I walked, as I worked. My Bible study spent probably an hour picking them on a hike one day. There’s something about picking berries that makes you feel like a little kid again. The raspberries were thousands of little gifts scattered all over the camp.
Mondays were the worst day for trash runs. We’d take the trash from the trash room next to the kitchen, load it in the back of a truck, and unload it in a dumpster. On Mondays, the trash had built up over the weekend and started to reek, even worse than usual. So I turned on the speaker and got the trash chant going. Like a football team, the kids huddled. “Trash, trash, trash, trash, trash!” Not the most creative chant, but it got them excited about moving trash around, which was a feat in itself. We set off to break the camp trash-loading record. Unfortunately, an exceptionally heavy bag broke mid-load. I was splattered with some slightly maggoty chicken chili. After gagging for a moment, I recovered, and we set off to the dumpster.
When we got there, I disappointingly discovered the garbage trucks had not come and emptied the big dumpsters for the week. There was no room for anything else, but there we were, with a truck full of trash. So I climbed into a dumpster and started stomping stuff down. Then the kids would throw some more trash in, and I’d stomp it down again. They started a trash free-throw tournament that they thought was just absolutely hilarious. Standing there, covered in trash juice, knee-deep in garbage bags and rotting food, watching the kids play trash basketball, I realized I was happy. Like really deeply happy. And I had been for a while. Is this what joy feels like?
I had been going around claiming I had ‘joy” my whole life because I figured it was the Christian thing to do. My well-meaning Sunday School teachers and small group leaders had always told me that joy and happiness were NOT the same thing. Happiness was fickle, but joy was permanent. Joy wasn’t an emotion but a “choice” or some mysterious thing we held on to. In theory, being a Christian didn’t necessarily involve that much happiness, but it did involve joy, whatever that was. To me, this was an empty comfort. Life was bootstraps, mustering up strength, cold duty.
At camp, however, I was experiencing a simple truth. The joy I had been promised was happiness. It was happiness in God, and that was it. It wasn’t some mental acknowledgment that God was good in hard circumstances. It wasn’t silently suffering while I waved the “joyful” banner. It wasn’t some abstract idea that I couldn’t quite grasp. It was a deep happiness. I could grieve the deep hurts in my campers' lives, I could be frustrated with particularly stubborn fence posts, I could be hacking up a lung for 4 weeks, or be in the middle of the great pinkeye pandemic and be happy. Suffering didn’t extinguish joy. Sadness and anger and this quiet happiness could all exist at the same time. This idea, that God wanted me to be happy, shifted the foundations of my life.
The day the kids left for the last time, the counselors kind of lost our minds. I guess that's what happens when college students are suddenly released from all responsibility after three months. We had a big banquet and threw people in the lake. For the first time since training, we were free to just hang out and be together. That night was full of campfires and smores, swing dancing, and setting our hand sanitizer-covered hands on fire. We talked and laughed. I cried a bit. I thought my heart was going to pop. God’s been so good to me.
Everything seems different now, but I can’t really explain exactly how or why. The trees, the sky, the people I talk to seem more alive. Sometimes I just look out at the cornfields and lose my breath for a second. It’s like there’s some trait about the whole world that I was missing before. By God’s grace alone, the passion and joy I’d been praying for are suddenly mine, real, like I can hold them in my hands. Talking to God is like talking to a friend. Days or even weeks of fear will still resurface once in a while but for the most part, I’m free. Free from dead works. Free from a heavy yoke. Free to take up my cross and follow, lifted up by the love of the Father. Standing in the middle of this big beautiful mystery, I’m happy and free. It’s crazy and wonderful and mindblowing. It’s like walking down a path picking handfuls of sweet wild raspberries.
Hannah Doorenbos is an English education major at Northwest Missouri State University. This is her first published piece. She grew up in Gretna, Nebraska but currently lives in the wonderful Maryville, Missouri. She loves writing, reading, teaching, and learning to understand the glory of God.