Everybody Hurts

We Hurt in Different Ways

This article was written in 2012 by James Standish, who at the time was the Communication Director for the South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists. It appeared in the Australian RECORD magazine of June 2, 2012 and I printed it in our South African Signs of the Times of September/October, 2012.

THE ARTICLE

When I arrived in Detroit from Singapore for my last year of High School, I had a sinking feeling. It had seemed a brilliant idea to leave my missionary kid boarding school in Singapore for a breath of fresh air in a place I’d never been before.

But on arrival, I realised I was so far from anyone or anything I knew and there was no way back. Everything from the sports to the weather, from the accents to the attitudes, was entirely foreign. I felt very much alone.

But two guys saved me.

The first was a red-headed rocker named Rick (I have changed the names of the people in this story), from the rough auto town of Saginaw. Rick quickly seized on the fact that I love music. He pumped me for everything I knew about English and Australian bands. And he introduced me to American bands like the Replacements and REM. We became roommates, and this magazine lacks the pages and the tolerance for all the stories I could tell of that wonderful time bonding over raucous chords and raging lyrics.

Rick could have looked like this. Photo by Adrian Rosco Stef on Unsplash.

And then there was John. John was to Rick what the North Pole is to the South. While Rick had received virtually every disciplinary measure available to a stringent Adventist boarding school of the day, John was the head monitor in charge of enforcement. While Rick was untidy and untamed, John was always on time, always reliable, always doing the right thing at the right place, But it didn’t take long for John and me to realise we shared a passion for all things political.

So my dorm life was torn between watching the news every evening in the dorm TV room with John and discussing current events and the merits of Raegan (he for, me against), and late night sessions discussing classic Cream and the merits of the latest Police album with Rick (both for).

These two friends were a lifeboat, as were the twin passions of politics and music we shared. One of my favourite songs to this day is a deeply moving REM ballad, “Everybody Hurts” (this was released the year after I finished high school).

When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on, Don’t let yourself go, Everybody cries, And everybody hurts sometimes, So hold on, hold on

The song was written by REM’s drummer for high school students. Kids like me confused, lonely, wondering where my place was in this world. When I look back at my high school years, I shiver at how alienated and alone I often felt.

But in many ways I had nothing to complain about. For all my adolescent angst, it turns out I had nothing on my friend John.

John and I roomed together in college and we travelled together in Asia, Australia, the UK and the Middle East. And yet, for the first two decades of our friendship, I really had no idea who John was - or at least one incredibly important aspect of who John was.

We were in Manhattan, visiting friends about 10 years ago, and we met John at a Greenwich Village restaurant. It was late in the evening and, as usual, we were talking politics. But John seemed strangely nervous. My wife stepped away for a few minutes and then John said in a deadly serious voice, “I’ve got to tell you something”. Something what? What could John tell me that’s new? What could be so dreadfully sombre? After all these years, all these places, all these circumstances and conversations, what on earth could he be so nervous and so serious about?

John and I were in a restaurant in Manhattan. Image by Michelle Pitzel from Pixabay.

“I’m gay…” he said.

I was gobsmacked but, for once in my life, I said the right thing at the right time - “OK, well, I still love you.” When Leisa returned, the three of us talked and then we walked out of the restaurant into the bustling Manhattan night.

Since then I’ve often thought about all those years I was one of John’s best friends. I’ve wondered what I said or did that communicated to him that I wouldn’t accept his sexuality. I wonder if I laughed at stupid gay jokes or disparaging comments between all the babble about foreign affairs and macroeconomics. And I wonder what kind of living hell he went through coming to terms with his sexual orientation in those painful adolescent years.

John often wrestled with his own identity

Tragically, it’s reported that many young people who struggle with their sexual identity don’t ever get to the point where they reconcile themselves and their society to who they are. The harsh ostracism, the fear of parental rejection, the peer mocking, all combine with intense internal dissonance to make them believe their life is not worth continuing.

We must work to ensure that doesn’t happen in our community.

If there is one thing we cannot overdo as Christians, it’s love and acceptance. Yes, we have standards of sexual behaviour and those should not change. But it can be a tough tightrope to walk between principle and compassion. Compassion unhitched from principle can result in condoning behaviour at odds with the Bible. Principle divorced from compassion, on the other hand, is not only unredemptive but can crush a vulnerable person. And when it comes to issues as complex, personal and pervasively defining as our sexual nature, this is even more so.

If there is one community on earth that should be a safe, supportive, unconditionally loving place for all adolescents it is our churches, our schools and our homes. As a Christian, I want to be the kind of guy, the kind of dad, the kind of friend, that no matter what, I’m giving the love, support and kindness that encourages everyone I know to “hold on, hold on…” In this painful and often confusingly sinful world, there is love, there is comfort and there is always, always hope.