Save me, O God; for the waters are come into my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried . . .                        —Psalms 69:1–3

I‘m sure I have never before understood the Biblical David’s sense of drowning and helplessness the way I do now. I don’t know why David suffers in this psalm, but the metaphor sings of being stuck in mud without escape, of the waters flooding him while he cries for help. I can easily imagine David’s broken heart.

At least once or twice in nearly every life, a catastrophe happens that makes us feel as if we are drowning with no hope of rescue. At those times, we cry and plead to God for a miracle until our throat is hoarse, yet we still feel our prayer is unanswered. I now know what David means by being weary of crying. A song is a prayer, but a prayer can also be a cry of despair—a hallelujah that hurts to sing.

The first line of David’s heartbreaking cry for help is understood better with a clearer translation. Instead of “for the waters are come into my soul,” the line could be more accurately rendered as “for the waters have come up to my neck.” Part of the confusion in the King James translation is that the same Hebrew word, nepeš, is used for both soul and neck (or throat). So David is expressing in this psalm his feeling of flood waters coming up to his neck while he cries to the Lord for safety.

A modern song that beautifully captures the Biblical David’s sense of despair is “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen.  Although it originally garnered little attention, it has now become one of Cohen’s most covered songs. The first two verses read:

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music, do you?

It goes like this,

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift,

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.

She tied you to a kitchen chair

She broke your throne and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Not long ago, my wife and I received a panic-stricken call from our son’s mission president in Africa. The elders’ quorum president in the ward in which our son had been serving had committed suicide, and the despair of the situation led to our son’s suffering a debilitating mental psychosis. When the mission office called us, our son was in a hospital with few prospects for a quick cure. Before this breakdown, his mission president had described our son  as a terrific, hardworking missionary.

Often our first impulse when learning of a loved one’s mental illness is to keep the news within the family because we are too ashamed to tell others. Overcoming this hesitation, for we knew this burden was too great to bear alone, my wife and I asked our bishop to enlist some ward members to fast with us. The bishop was discreet, and the ward members he asked knew only they were fasting for our missionary son.

The next Sunday, however, a ward member took me aside and said, “Don’t you just wish you could knock some sense into your missionary’s head when he doesn’t want to work?” Suddenly I felt as if the ward information system had become a version of the old game of “telephone.” The bishop’s discretion had led some of the members to conclude that the problem was a lazy missionary.

It is bad enough to suffer; somehow it seems worse when your ward members operate under the wrong assumptions. Similarly well-intentioned relatives also offered poor comfort. One asked us, “How could Heavenly Father let something like this happen to his missionary?” The implication of such a question, of course, is that either we or our son are doing something Heavenly Father disapproves of, and this is his way of calling us to repentance. Neither my wife nor I believe God works this way, nor do we believe that being on a mission gives someone special protection from life’s problems. After all, what about the heartbroken families who have received a returned missionary child in a coffin?

Of course, my selfish desires overwhelmed me as well. My wife and I are nearly empty-nesters, and I had joyfully anticipated an imminent emancipation from child-rearing. Now some of my expectations of a comfortable retirement had been broken as I considered the possibility of needing to care full-time for an adult son. I was overwhelmed with sadness for the difficult life he might have ahead but also with guilt at considering my own lost prospects.

After two weeks of treatment in a hospital in Durban, South Africa, my son contracted a blood infection and pulmonary emboli. Now not only was his mental health at risk; so was his life. He was moved to intensive care, and I impulsively  decided to go be with him. My decision came just days before the World Cup started in South Africa, but I eventually found flights and a place to stay. I also secured the smallest rental car I’ve ever had—a car that forced me to learn to drive a left-handed stick shift on the left side of the road.

I visited my son in the Catholic-run hospital in Durban two or three times a day. I stayed a full week, during which he recovered from the infection and regained physical strength. I then began to work with him so he could begin vocalizing and remembering what had happened just before he came into the hospital.

I started slowly.

“Do you remember what area you were working in before you cam to the hospital?”

“Kwadabeka Ward,” he replied.

I asked if he remembered the name of the bishop.

“Bishop Mthembe.”

“How about the ward mission leader?

“Brother Dumasabe.”

Do you remember the elders’ quorum president? He shook his head.

“No, Dad. It’s too sad. I don’t remember his name.”

“That’s OK,” I said.

After a few moments, I asked if he remembered what had happened to that brother.

“He died. He was my friend.” Then my son began to sob intensely. He recalled visiting the brother’s children in their home shortly after they had learned the news. “We put our arms around his children and told them it would be OK.”

“Go ahead and cry,” I told him. “It’s OK to be sad and even mad when someone we love dies.” Then I changed the subject to something more mundane, but over the next few days, he remembered the quorum president’s name and more of the circumstances.

This particular brother’s wife had died five years before; crumbling beneath the burden, he had eventually taken his children to a park, apparently intending to kill them and then himself. Instead, he took his children home before returning to the park and shooting himself.

I know that heartbreak comes with discipleship; God has said so many times. But does it have to be this heartbreak, in this way, at this time? And as painful as it is for my son, I wonder if much of this particular heartbreak is meant for me instead of him. I seriously doubt that when he regains his normal post-teen life, he will remember very much of this episode, but it is etched on my soul. I thought I was the strong one, but I surprised myself when tears wet my cheeks and my voice cracked as I spoke with my son in the African hospital.

There is a new song by Amy Grant now getting widespread airtime on Christian radio stations. It’s called “Better than a Hallelujah.” The chorus goes:

We pour out our miseries,

God just hears a melody

Beautiful, the mess we are

The honest cries of breaking hearts

Are better than a Hallelujah.

Now when my calls for help are unheeded and I feel flood waters rising around my neck, I want to cry out, “Lord, my heart is broken” and wish that my trials were already over. But even though it kills me to confess it, I nevertheless have my own painful hallelujah to sing: “Lord, my heart is not yet broken.”

Michael Vinson

Star Valley, Wyoming