Pillar 4: Transcendence

Transcendence — David Chose

Look, I get why this hits me. Because I’ve felt that kind of empty.

David’s son Absalom—his own kid—turns on him. Takes the throne. Sleeps his women right out where everyone can see. Not privately. Publicly. On the roof. In daylight. It’s not just rebellion. It’s humiliation. It’s a statement: You are finished.

The city flips. Advisors defect. Men he trusted start choosing sides. The whisper spreads faster than truth ever does—“God’s done with him.”

David doesn’t fight back. Doesn’t scream. Doesn’t even grab shoes.

He walks out barefoot.

And a king does not go barefoot. Not in that culture. Not ever. Kings are robed. Elevated. Carried. Protected from the ground itself. Bare feet meant mourning. Shame. Surrender. It meant you were stripped of status.

He chooses it.

Head covered. Weeping. Dirt cutting into his skin with every step down the Mount of Olives. The people around him crying too. This isn’t theatrical. This is collapse.

He still has loyal men. He still has warriors. He could turn around. He could send a signal and take the city back in blood. He could justify it. “God anointed me.” “This is my throne.” “My son betrayed me.” Every excuse available.

But he doesn’t reach for power.

He keeps walking.

Stops at the valley. Looks up. And says something that doesn’t sound heroic at all:

“If the Lord says, ‘I have no delight in you,’ here I am. Let Him do to me what seems good to Him.”

That’s not confidence. That’s exposure.

That’s a man releasing control when control is the only thing that could save him.

He doesn’t numb it.
Doesn’t rage against it.
Doesn’t collapse into self-pity.

He stays open.

That’s transcendence.

Not escaping pain.
Not overpowering it.
Not pretending it’s fine.

It’s letting the pain strip you—and not scrambling to cover yourself back up with pride.

Later, Joab ignores orders and kills Absalom anyway. Finds him hanging in a tree. Drives spears through him. Leaves him like a warning sign.

When David hears, he doesn’t say, “Justice.”
He doesn’t say, “Good.”
He doesn’t say, “He deserved it.”

He breaks.

“My son Absalom… my son… my son…”

The king is undone. Publicly. Again.

And here’s the part that matters:

He doesn’t harden.

He doesn’t let betrayal turn him cruel.
He doesn’t let grief turn him smaller.
He doesn’t let humiliation turn him into Saul.

He absorbs it.

His grief was so consuming that Joab confronted him. The men who had risked their lives for David returned to the city quietly, as though they had been defeated rather than victorious.

David had to stand up, meet them at the gate, and resume the responsibility of leading.

That matters too.

Transcendence did not mean disappearing into grief or pretending leadership no longer mattered. It meant allowing himself to break without remaining broken—grieving his son, then rising to face the people who still depended on him.

Why?

Because transcendence changed him.

It made him a king who wasn’t ruled by the throne.
A father who could grieve instead of dominate.
A leader who could surrender without disintegrating.

That moment didn’t restore his son.
It didn’t erase the betrayal.
It didn’t fix the kingdom overnight.

It did something deeper.

It showed his identity wasn’t attached to the crown.

And that’s the difference.

Pain could have reduced him to survival mode.
Could have turned him defensive.
Paranoid.
Ruthless.

Instead, it did not get the final word.

Transcendence isn’t coming out untouched.
It’s coming out uncorrupted.

I know what it feels like—when the world says, “You’re done,” and you could believe it. When humiliation would be easier to fight than accept. When control feels safer than surrender.

But you don’t grab for the crown.
You don’t grab for revenge.
You don’t grab for image.

You keep walking.

Barefoot.
Bleeding.
Exposed.

And when you come out the other side, you’re not bigger because you won.

You’re bigger because you didn’t let pain rewrite who you are.

That’s transcendence.

Not survival.

Transformation under pressure.

Transcendence — Saul Failed

When Saul lost, he didn’t stop. He didn’t sit with it. He didn’t let it pass through him. He tried to outrun it.

Every loss became someone else’s fault. Every wound became justification. Instead of letting pain shape him, he turned it outward—into rage, suspicion, control. He tightened his grip. He doubled down. He chased David harder, as if killing the reminder would quiet the ache.

But pain doesn’t work like that.

Saul seemed unable to accept what had already been decided. He may have recognized the loss in brief moments, but he never appeared able to live peacefully inside that reality. He kept reaching backward, fighting to preserve what was already slipping away.

So everything stayed raw. Unfinished.

He kept fighting battles that could not restore what had been lost because he could not bring himself to release it.

By the time he reached Endor, Saul seemed less interested in guidance than in finding some way around what had already been declared. He wanted the past back. The crown back. The certainty back.

On Gilboa, wounded and surrounded, Saul still could not let go. Even then, his final concern was control. He feared being captured, abused, and displayed by the Philistines, so he asked his armor-bearer to kill him. When the man refused, Saul fell on his own sword.

Even at the end, he was still trying to control the manner of his defeat rather than surrendering honestly to what his choices had brought him.

That’s the opposite of transcendence.

Saul did not seem able to let pain pass through him. He let it lodge inside him, harden, and rot. He tried to dominate it, erase it, outrun it. And in the end, it consumed him—not because it was too great, but because he refused to carry it honestly.

Pain doesn’t disappear when you deny it.

It waits.

And eventually, it decides for you.

Transcendence — What Letting Go Required of Me

I still confuse letting go with giving up. I still reach for control when uncertainty scares me, and I still revisit losses I cannot change. Transcendence, for me, is not arriving somewhere beyond grief. It is learning, again and again, how to keep moving without letting grief become my identity.

I’m not telling this story because I have mastered letting go. I haven’t. There are losses I still resist, hopes I still cling to, and days when grief pulls me backward. This was simply one moment when I began to understand that moving forward does not always mean the pain is gone.

During my incarceration, I lost my family. I didn’t just want to be “a father” in theory—I longed to write them on every birthday, to hear their voices, to believe I could rebuild a future where I was part of their lives. But all I got were threats—if I didn’t hand over everything, I’d lose them entirely. I was drowning in despair. Then my dad said something that cut deep: “You have to accept them as gone, like they’ve died, or you won’t survive.” I hated him for it. But over time, I realized he was right. I wasn’t letting go of love, but I had to let the life I imagined die, or I’d never live again. I accepted that I might never be part of their lives as I hoped. But in that death of the old life, I started building something new. That’s transcendence—not because the pain fades, but because you keep walking when the life you wanted is gone. And even then, I never stopped hoping.

Even now, eleven years later, in silence, I still carry that hope. It’s buried deep, quieter than it used to be, but it’s there. And that’s part of transcendence too—knowing you can keep walking forward, even with hope that no one else can see.