Grief and Loss

BOOK LAUNCH! Digging in the Dirt is here!

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Buy it here!

From the back cover:

Welcome to ground level, to the dirt and the mess.

We like the mountain tops and the sunshine. We like green grass under a clear blue sky. We like victory and breakthrough and answered prayers. But sometimes it rains, the shadows deepen, and life turns muddy. Sometimes God seems quiet. What then? What happens when depression descends, or anxiety hangs like a sword overhead? What happens when loneliness suffocates, the thief steals more than stuff, and you get blood on your shoes?

In Digging in the Dirt, Jonathan Trotter delves into the disasters, the darkness, and the deluge, and he offers comfort, presence, and a gentle invitation to hope.

With humor and prose, with poetry and Top Ten lists, Jonathan welcomes us to the dirt, to the places where we actually live. He invites us to boldly see life as it is, with eyes wide open, and reminds us that even when the digging is scary, we are never alone.

To the ones who are dealing with devastation and distress, welcome. To the ones who need to uproot, to pull out, to clear ground, welcome. To the ones who seek desperately to plant seeds of grace and hope in once barren soil, welcome. To the missionary abroad and the believer at home, welcome. Receive the invitation, and join with Jonathan here at ground level, together.

Come, dig in the dirt.

From the preface:

Hello and Welcome!

I’m Jonathan, and it’s such a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to journeying with you through these pages. Together, we’ll delve into the dirt of life and relationships, of sorrows, pain, and loss. And maybe we’ll plant some things too.

Perhaps, along the way, we’ll see small, green stalks of life and hope begin to poke through, watered with the tears of the journey. Digging like this can be messy, but it can be good too.

These musings will meander from the hot dirt of Cambodia to the sticky mud of American politics. Some of these musings are inspired by international missionary life; some of them are firmly rooted in an American context. But whether you’re American or not, whether you’re a missionary or not, I hope that you find them all a blessing, an encouragement, and perhaps sometimes a challenge. I wrote them for you, and I share them with you with my whole heart.

Start reading Digging in the Dirt wherever you’d like, and feel free to skip ahead or go backwards. Are you a cross-cultural missionary? Start there if you want. Are you interested in developing emotional intelligence, or are you exploring whether or not Christians are allowed to have feelings? Consider starting in the Emotions section. Are you reeling from recent life events that have left you feeling like you’re choking on the mud and muck? First of all, I’m so sorry. Second, breathe a slow, deep breath, look over the Table of Contents, and start wherever you need to start.

Wherever you are, and whatever your story, welcome to ground level, to the dirt. It is here that the real work happens; the good, hard, sweet, healing work. It is my deepest hope that here, among these musings, you may find grace, peace, and a hope that just might be strong enough to crack through the crust.

All for ONE,
Jonathan Trotter

What people are saying about Digging in the Dirt:

A genuine book where no topic is off limits, Digging in the Dirt hits you right where you are regardless of location or vocation. This book is a must-read for anyone who is or is thinking about serving in missions and ministry! – DeAnna Anderson, former Director of the Launch Team for Wycliffe Bible Translators and missionary

Digging in the Dirt is a breath of fresh air for Christians. – Kim H.

Jonathan has such an authentic insight into life on the field, and he addresses the hard things in such a real and tangible way that helps you to know you are not alone. I would totally recommend this book for anyone who is serving overseas, sending someone overseas, or remotely interested in mission life. – Sydney, PI Leader for Southeast Asia

Rarely does an author bring the perspective of a missionary, nurse, theologian, pilot, counselor, parent, and gardener to cross-cultural ministry, family dynamics, depression, grief, politics, and the church, all in one book. Even rarer is a book that combines all of those things in a way that rings authentic and meaningful. Digging in the Dirt manages to do both, bringing thought-provoking and heartfelt lessons out of an incredible range of real-life experiences. – Reuben James

Digging in the Dirt is a must-read for anyone in missions or ministry. It’s refreshingly humble and vulnerable, and no matter what stage of life and ministry you’re in, you’ll walk away with some wisdom and new insight. – B.W., Stateside missions support worker

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Check it out on Amazon here!

*Amazon affiliate links

Chatting About Repatriation

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Christine Paterson of FieldPartner International and I recently had a conversation about repatriation (among various other cross-cultural topics). It’s the first time I’ve talked about re-entry in an interview, and I think it might be the first recorded interview I’ve done since our book launched in 2019.

It was an honor to be invited to Christine’s channel and a pleasure to chat with her. You can access the video interview on the FieldPartner website or on YouTube, or you can listen to the audio version on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

~Elizabeth

When Depression Descends

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Author’s note: This article should not be used to diagnose or treat clinical depression. If you are having thoughts of hurting yourself or attempting suicide, please seek out a medical and/or mental health professional immediately, visit the Lifeline online, or call 1-800-273-8255 (U.S.). A list of international suicide prevention hotlines can be viewed here and here. — Jonathan

It feels like a leaden mantle descending over everything, blotting out the sun, joy, and the belief that there is anything good in the world. It leaves your feet bolted to the floor and your heart frozen in the empty void of black space.

It feels like liquid cement pouring into your body, heavy and thick, slowly solidifying, hardening, restricting movement. It feels like your chest is being crushed. Like a polio victim without an iron lung, desperately searching for the energy to overcome diaphragmatic paralysis. It feels like a suffocation.

It doesn’t always feel like sadness. It might look like incessant weeping, sure, but it just might look like staring at a blank wall for fifteen minutes. Unmoving.

Even if you’re a missionary. Even if you love your wife and kids. Even if you have enough money and love your job. Even if you have a fulfilling ministry, both on and offline. Even if you work with therapists and help pastor a church. Even if you love the Psalms and know about lament and have written extensively about emotional health. Even if you’ve studied depression and sat with suicidal clients (in a counseling center) and patients (in an ER). Even if.

Sometimes, it’s just there, and it is so terribly heavy.

I have been there. And still, after our unplanned transition back to America, our dislocation and eventual resettling, COVID-19, a dark winter, and political chaos, it still threatens. Occasionally I get a whiff of the darkness, and it turns my stomach sour.

If you’ve been there, if you’ve felt these things, please know this: you are not alone.

For me, at the scariest point, I started thinking about ending my life. I never developed a plan (which is a blaring warning sign, especially if the person has the means to carry out the plan), but I was ruminating more and more about death and dying, and it scared me tremendously.

I had started taking an occasional non-narcotic pain medication to help me sleep. In Cambodia, so many prescription medications do not require a prescription and are available in blister packs at the cash register. This can be handy, but it’s also very dangerous and should probably be the topic of a later essay. Anyways, we had neighbors on both sides of our row house that kept very late hours. On one side, it was drunk karaoke followed by the smashing and screaming of domestic violence. On the other side, it was a bit of a house-turned-warehouse where they repackaged boxes for local distribution – think screeching packing tape – until 1 or 2 am nightly. The packaging center was about three feet away from the head of our bed. The drunken abuse was about five feet from the foot of our bed. Bricks and a little plaster and tile were not enough. I wasn’t sleeping well, and I was getting more and more anxious and agitated.

So I started taking this medication.

Looking back, I think the spiritual, environmental, and psychological stresses brought me to the tipping point, and the medication nudged me over the edge.

Incentive to Hide

In any sort of Christian ministry, there can be an immense incentive to hide things like this. If the person who’s asking how you’re doing also has the power to fire you, relocate your family, or detach you, your spouse, and your kids from your church, school, and social support, well, honestly, that’s a ridiculous ask. (I’m not saying that’s a healthy dynamic, by the way, I’m just saying that it’s pretty typical in the missions world. Again, another essay for another time.)

But when it comes to depression, silence could be deadly. And while I certainly understand the reasons for hiding, hiding depression can lengthen your misery, shielding you from help and resources. Depression is very treatable once it’s identified.

Don’t hide, and please oh please don’t feel like you’re a failed Christian or a failed missionary just because you’re depressed. You’re not less than or anything of the sort; you just may need a little bit of extra support for a time.

I did.

I still do from time to time.

How to Respond: Tell Someone

I talked with a doctor. I’ll never forget the day he said, “You know, it’s a rare side effect, but it is a documented side effect of that particular medication.” I went home and threw those blister packs in the trash like they were filled with gecko poop and crawling with giant cockroaches.

I increased the frequency of meetings with two good friends, one of whom was a therapist and one of whom was a pastor. I broadened my support base. I changed my diet, reducing processed foods and sugar, increasing fruits and vegetables. I started exercising more.

If you’re not sure, but you think you might be depressed, please consult with your doctor and/or a mental health professional. Check out our resources page for mental health professionals in your area. You do not have to do this alone.

There are so many resources available, and there are so many treatment modalities that are proven to help (talk therapy, medications, lifestyle changes, etc.). You do not have to do this alone.

NOTE: If someone hears your story and tells you that you just need to try harder or read your Bible more or root out the sin in your life or be more disciplined or some such nonsense, please smile and nod, turn around, and run the other direction towards someone who will give you good advice. Because that person’s not.

How to Respond: Educate Yourself

Sometimes, the depression’s so thick that you don’t have it in you to do any sort of online research or reading. That’s ok. If that’s where you’re at, reach out to someone and skip this part.

But if you can and if you want to, remember that you have access to a whole host of online resources. I typically turn to the Mayo Clinic or the Cleveland Clinic for medically accurate information that’s written for non-medical folks. Read their information on depression here and here and chronic depression (over two years) here and here.

The NHS has a short depression self-assessment tool that might also be a helpful place to start.

And now, please don’t laugh, but I REALLY appreciated the material in the book Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies, by Rhena Branch and Rob Willson. Their section on depression has been immensely helpful for me and several friends. Check it out.

Additional Resources

This is the first time I’ve written so explicitly about depression. Here are some musings (and a sermon/podcast) about related things, like Grief, C.S. Lewis and the Deeper Magic, and Hope.

Remember, you are not alone. The promises are true.

You are not alone.

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From the Mayo Clinic: When to get emergency help

If you think you may hurt yourself or attempt suicide, call 911 or your local emergency number immediately.

Also consider these options if you’re having suicidal thoughts:

  • Call your doctor or mental health professional.
  • Call a suicide hotline number — in the U.S., call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255). Use that same number and press “1” to reach the Veterans Crisis Line. [Visit their website here.]
  • Reach out to a close friend or loved one.
  • Contact a minister, spiritual leader or someone else in your faith community.

If you have a loved one who is in danger of suicide or has made a suicide attempt, make sure someone stays with that person. Call 911 or your local emergency number immediately. Or, if you think you can do so safely, take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

Eight Hundred Thousand

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When you think of COVID-19, where do you start? What’s your initial gut reaction to discussions of pandemic response, vaccines, etc.?

Obviously, these are treacherous waters, and our society has fractured along some new and some old fault lines. But why? I’ve been pondering this hard, trying to figure out, as an American, as a Christian, what motivates (or scares?) people in these discussions. It seems to me that the primary difference in these discussions hinges on whether you believe that the pandemic threatens either liberty or life.

For some, the pandemic is an overblown risk that governments around the world are seizing upon as an opportunity to strip away liberties and long-held freedoms: freedom of movement, bodily autonomy, even the freedom to worship.

For others, the pandemic involves a deadly disease that has killed 800,000 people in our country alone, and governments (and people) have a responsibility to mitigate the loss of life as much as possible.

Where we start often determines where we end up, so this matters.

If the issues circle around freedom, you’re likely to claim government overreach, saying things like “Don’t tread on me” or “Give me liberty or give me death.” Vaccine requirements, social distancing, and even mask mandates, present an existential threat to your freedoms. Fair enough.

If the issues circle around public health and the threat to life (yours and others’), you’re more likely to embrace masks and vaccines and be ok with government regulations that aim to prevent the spread of a deadly pathogen. You’re willing to give up some liberty and some opportunities. Also, fair enough.

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you know which side I generally reside in. As an ER nurse and pastor/missionary for twenty years, one of the hardest things for me to reconcile has been the fact that so many Christians seem to reside — almost exclusively — on the liberty side. Sean Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” gatherings represent what I’m talking about. White evangelical Christians have seemed so very LOUD when it comes to defending religious liberty and bodily autonomy. I have not heard so much about masking and vaccines as a form of loving your neighbor. Those things are ploys of the devil (or democrats) to steal my liberties.

But 800,000 souls have been lost in our country alone, and the tidal waves of grief and loss emanating from those losses impact millions. So many people (including several friends) are dealing with long-haul COVID, and that is no joke. Again, we’re just talking about the US here. Hospitals and healthcare staff around the country are being stretched to the margins, and we may only be at the beginning of a winter surge.

I guess what I’m saying is, let’s look at our starting points and honestly assess them. Hey, I love freedom, and I’m glad I live in America. I am grateful for the parts of our heritage that value liberty and freedom. Those are worth caring about and defending. But as a Christian, if my biggest concern and motivating factor is personal freedom (even of religion), I’ve lost the plot. We are called to so much more.

I’ve heard pastors say that we shouldn’t worry because 99% of people who get COVID will be fine. That gives you personally a pretty good chance, sure, but across a population, that would mean over three million dead Americans. Can someone care about those deaths without being a communist?

Is there a middle ground? Is it possible to care about liberty and life? Is it possible to recognize that some mitigation measures have been too onerous and caused way too many negative outcomes, while also having empathy for the sick and vulnerable and acting in their best interests? Is it possible to care about life and not support draconian lockdowns? Is it possible to worship God without exposing everyone around you to a potentially lethal pathogen?

Is it possible to behave with mercy and gentleness and the love of Christ in this day and age?

I hope so.

Book Review: Where the Light Fell

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by Jonathan

I thought I’d like this memoir from Philip Yancey, but I had no idea it would be such a page turner, lurching from fundamentalism to racism to grace to dysfunction to mercy to LSD to classical piano to faith and on and on and on.

“An upbringing under a wrathful God does not easily fade away.”

For someone who’s written so much (and so gently) about suffering and grace, I should not have been surprised at the terror, trauma, and healing present in Yancey’s story.

“Like every secret, it gained power as it lay hidden.”

If you’ve wrestled with religious burn out, or if you’ve had a hard time reconciling the church with Christ, you might resonate with this book.

“As a boy wandering in the woods, a teenager constructing a psychic survival shell, a lovesick college student running from the Hound of Heaven — in all those places I found what T.S. Eliot called ‘a tremour of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper.’ I came to love God out of gratitude, not fear.”

This book will endure for quite some time, I think.

Find it on Amazon here.*

*Amazon affiliate link