The Grief of Golgotha: Nailed Beneath Him

One moment I was myself. And then I was gone. One moment I was laying down asleep, and the next I was in Golgotha.

Something seized over my body and pulled me into one of the most horrifying and sorrowful experiences I have ever experienced. I was no longer simply witnessing the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, I was inside it. I was beneath the cross and upon it at the same time. I could feel the suffering moving through my flesh as though it belonged to me.

I remember the nail entering my foot. Not symbolically. Not metaphorically.

I felt it tear through skin, muscle, and bone with unbearable force. My whole body physically contorting and involuntary shaking from the nailing of my limb. My body convulsed as the pain ripped upward through me. Blood poured downward from above my head, warm and endless, dripping onto me as I stared upward in terror and grief. I looked at Christ’s wounded feet above me, then slowly raised my eyes toward Him and witnessed his bloody body. I could hear weeping and sorrowness of the loved ones at the foot of Christ, at the same time hearing my sisters and my father trying to comfort me and wake me up.

And I broke.

The sorrow that flooded me in that moment was beyond anything I thought a human being could survive. I cried out with sounds that did not feel human anymore; deep, ancient cries pulled from somewhere primal within my soul. I was in pain. My body twisted and contorted violently as wave after wave of intense agony crashed through me. Then came the feelings of my wrists, or almost the lack thereof.

I felt the nails pierced through my wrists. The gushing of blood erupting from my veins. I felt the skin split open, piercing into the wood. The sharp splinters entered my veins...

I felt the helplessness of being pinned into suffering with no escape, no mercy, no relief. Every breath became torture. Every movement felt drenched in despair. I wept so violently that my chest felt as though it would collapse inward. The cries coming from my body were long, guttural, and broken; the kind of crying that comes from a place deeper than language.

And the grief… God, the grief. It was not ordinary sadness. It was not even personal sorrow. It felt cosmic. It felt like an ancient sadness I didn't know was even possible. An immense and deep, deep suffering so incredibly divine.

It felt as though I had touched the unbearable grief of humanity itself; the sorrow of suffering, death, sacrifice, abandonment, violence, mourning, and love all collapsing into a single moment inside my body. The pain felt infinite. Ancient. Sacred. Catastrophic.

I remember breathing in massive, trembling breaths between cries, trying desperately to survive the weight of what I was feeling. I did not know the human body was capable of weeping that deeply. Every inhale felt endless, as though my lungs were dragging despair itself into my chest. I cried with a level of anguish I had never encountered before in my life.

I cannot fully explain what overtook me during this possession. I only know that for those moments, I was submerged inside a sorrow so immense that it no longer felt humanly possible. It was respiratory anguish and emotional devastation.

I'm a nobody. Who was I as an insufferable shaman to experience such possession and witness the crucifixion? All I know is that the experience shattered something inside me and I am trying to cope with what I saw, what I felt, and what overtook my body that night. I don't think my mind can categorize this experience...