By KENNY CHUMBLEY
Rantoul Press columnist

Part of Charles Dickens’ genius lay in his ability to caricature the goodness, the silliness, the foolishness, the kindness, the eccentricity, the pettiness, the duplicity and the cruelty that are the stuff of life.

A memorable illustration of this is Miss Havisham, a character who appears in “Great Expectations.” Though somewhat of a wallflower, Miss Havisham is pursued by a suitor whom she comes to adore.

When he proposes marriage, she jumps at the chance and preparations are made: a date is set, the dress is bought, the honeymoon is planned and the guests are invited.

But when the big day comes, a note arrives from the groom, calling off the marriage.

Devastated, Miss Havisham reacts to this hurt by going through the house and stopping all the clocks at 20 minutes to 9 — the exact time the note was delivered.

She closes the drapes so that no light can enter the house. Day after day, she wears her wedding dress and hobbles about in the single shoe she had on when the letter came.

And she refuses to allow the wedding cake, which had been placed on the banquet table, to be removed. (Over the years, however, the cake is removed, crumb by crumb, as spiders and mice nest in it and eat away at it.)

For the next 50 years, Miss Havisham lived each day reliving the pain of her rejection.

Folks, this isn’t just literature, this is life. For the fact is that some have dealt with a broken heart by stopping the clock — not literally, but emotionally. Rather than allowing time and hope to work their magic, they spend their days nursing their grief, living in the darkness of self-pity, numb to the joy that each day holds.

The book of Genesis says that when Jacob thought his son Joseph had been killed by a wild animal, he “tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days.

All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No,’ he said, ‘in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.’”

To refuse to be comforted after a tragedy is to needlessly perpetuate the tragedy.

Lloyd Ogilvie, a former chaplain of the United States Senate, had a friend who had lost his enthusiasm for life and had grown boringly pessimistic. One day, Ogilvie confronted the man about his attitude and told him that he needed to decide if he was going to live while he was alive or continue to die before he died.

Weeks later, Ogilvie received a six-word letter from this friend that said, “Dear Lloyd, I’ve decided to live.”

I’m not trying to minimize the seriousness of anyone’s genuine and prolonged suffering. All I’m saying is that sometimes, even amidst great hurt, we just have to make up our minds to live.

Kenny Chumbley, a lifelong resident of Rantoul, is a minister, author and  publisher.