007. In the Deeps
Dear friend,
There’s this idea that I should be moving ahead with my grief which costs me overwhelm. How can I know the way? It is inky dark in this place — were I able to find my way by the stars I would. I don’t see stars. Maybe this is like a sensory deprivation tank. Why do people love those so much? I’ve never tried one because they sound claustrophobic and expensive, and why pay for misery when you can get it free?
I sound jaded these days which on one hand bothers me but on the other hand frees me. I’m not jaded, exactly, but I am angry. How much is a person expected to take without snapping? I know that it is already too late so far as cracking is concerned — there are a thousand tiny fractures all over my soul.
The responsibility of comfort feels as if it lies on me, and this is a responsibility I want to shed. To endure this level of pain for months and months and months, only to have it increase every few months or so. It is not that I cannot endure my present circumstances, but the idea that they might only continue to get worse and worse is actually unendurable. One cannot hold steady for the future, only the present. But even if we are able to close the door on the future for the moment in order to reckon with the present the pain expands to fill that place too. It is as if we pack pain into a space, and we must unpack it. Unpacking is like an inflatable thing which starts to take up much more space when the box is opened. This is probably why so many of us avoid pain, because opening up to it only makes it get bigger.
I wish I was able to do for myself what others do for me. They are gracious, but it is hard personally to be gracious. I am so angry that I am angry, and angry that angry is an option at all. Were I to get a mental picture of myself right now it would be a dog chasing its own tail, except grief is on my back instead of a physical object. I cannot prove it takes up space, I can only point to a photo of my mother and say, “she took up space.” It is the conundrum of the spiritual — it manifests in flesh that, once removed, becomes a universe unto us.
Louie Giglio says there is no comfort like God. I don’t like that very much since God is the one being who could make this pain go away and he keeps piling it on for some reason against which I beat with bloodied fists. Then he sits beside me and gathers my tears and I want to just rage at him. What kind of a thing is that to do? Make me happy again! That is my idea of comfort. It is sobering to me that I would rather look toward happiness than to a God who sits inside the pain. What a fury I am.
A friend sent me a quote I hang on to for dear life.
It’s alright — question, pain and stabbing anger can be poured out to the infinite One and God will not be damaged… for we beat on his chest from within the circle of his arms. -Susan Lenzkes
It is a word which I cannot deny, for I am in the circle of God’s arms even as I beat upon him like so many tormented waves. I am as the ocean in this time. I have limits, but the size of me is beyond my comprehension. It is only the borders of my pain which give me any idea of being held.
A friend of mine has brought me much food over the past weeks and she thinks it isn’t much. How isn’t it? It has partly kept me alive and to me, that is not small. People bring me beautiful things. They remind me to retain hope when it would be easier to let go. To be honest, I think once or twice a week, and sometimes once a day, that I would like to die. I won’t assist myself toward that, don’t worry, it would just be… nice. I ask the Lord often, “how shall I live?” Not because I need methodology but because it is a sincere question. I am bruised and battered beyond recognition. It is difficult for me to make out any of my internal features of personality and markers of identity. That God could allow one of his own such pain is a question that is irreconcilable.
My God, why do you forsake me?”
It would be better to have pretty words right now, but better is not manageable. I devote myself to remembering to breathe. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have reminded myself over the past weeks to start breathing again. I guess that makes sense. In an ocean to breathe is to die.
Everything seems to be reversing. My sister said that yesterday. This feels like a reversal to her. A reversal of death. Isn’t that interesting? For mom it is a reversal of the deterioration she was experiencing. I think of her sometimes, free of the extra weight that beset her personally and bursting with vitality. She didn’t often tell us about her pain levels accurately. We knew she had pain, but not that it was this bad. You could see it in some photos. I hate those photos, which makes me feel even worse. It is not fair to only remember the pleasant when pain is part of our experience. I would not want people to only be with me during the nice parts of life. Yet there it is, I don’t like remembering her pain.
What is true comfort? When I think of comfort it is sometimes found in words, sometimes in theology, sometimes in a movie, sometimes in a friend, sometimes in a meal, in friends who come to your mom’s funeral just because they love you, in friends who sit in the back of a room at mom’s viewing. Just… there. My friend-sister did that. She came all the way from North Carolina to just sit there. Available, even though I was tied up 85% of the time. She and God have a lot in common.
These meaningful connections didn’t take away the pain. I’ve thought a ton about how we expect happiness to come from outside of us. I would be happy if my mom were still alive, but would I? The question haunts me a little. I told someone over the funeral that if I do not choose happiness now I will never be happy. It’s true I cannot make myself feel happy just the same way that I cannot make myself feel in love with life. I do not love life right now, but I value it as some kind of strange gift. Something still worth pursuing even in this death.
It is strange to me to realize that God isn’t in the business of making me happy. These are hard words to say and perhaps for you to read even if you agree. No one is in that business, but if we care about someone it is something we care about. Are they happy? We want to see people thriving. I at least, am not usually ecstatic of someone else’s misfortune. I hate it alongside them.
As much as it seems that God is rejoicing over my sorrows, scripture doesn’t give me any such nonsense. Jesus, too, was a man of sorrows. I bow in tears to realize that I beat with fury upon the chest of the God-man who died for me. Why is God patient with my grief when it looks and feels awful? It is a struggle. People say to be gracious in grief, but do they know that some of the components of grief are stabbing anger, resentment, bitter words, and frenzy?
Perhaps they only mean to be gracious for the emotions like tears, but not anger. Is that not the wail piercing the heavens of a God, dying, who believes he is forsaken because he took on my sins. Was he forsaken? Was he angry? I don’t know. I really don’t know. God is always, always with us. I do not think he will go against that promise, but what is worse? A God with us in pain, or a God who leaves us in pain? The latter, of course the latter.
Will I ever be ok again? This is a time when I have to redefine what being ok, and happiness means to me. Sometime I will look back and see this time as a great gift, because I wrestled with God and he is giving me a new name.
I hate the idea that mom will now be forgotten, because she is gone. I hate that people die and their names disappear from the uttered words of this earth. Someone said that everyone dies two deaths: when they die, and the last time their name is spoken aloud.
Then, the other day the Holy Spirit revealed to me the true victory of God over death is when he writes people’s names into the Book of Life. They are not forgotten in death. Not by God. If it comes down to it I’d rather have mom’s name safe in God’s keeping than in my own consciousness and length of life, even though I will remember her too, even if finitely.
This light, momentary affliction feels like something from hell. But is it? Some of it is definitely the devil trying to get at me. I feel his insidious, clammy lies trying to tell me I deserve this. Fundamental Christianity might say I do. Again, I don’t know. I think maybe people mean “deserve” two different ways. One is that we are fallen short of the glory of God. We make our messes. Another recognizes that this isn’t on a punishment/reward system. God sends blessing to people that follow him and people that don’t. This much we know to be true, that we are loved with an everlasting love.
In some ways, the arguments like “what I do or don’t deserve” or “whether I am, or am not enough” are foolish. They are red herrings to a question which must come down to this. Do I believe God, or do I not? If he says I am made pure, redeemed, and in good standing with justice then to deny this means that I am lost forever in this grief of death. I could say I am not enough to save myself, and this would be true. I could say I am enough for God to save me. This would also be true. My question now is, will he?
I do not know. How terrible this is — I do not know. Part of me says that God has delivered many others, but the other part says that maybe I’m the Christian who finally snapped his patience. That is the problem with the deeps. It is hard to identify anything or anyone. This place is perilous. Paul says we don’t grieve without hope and I have every hope for mom, it’s true. I don’t know that I have enough left for me. But it is not my hope.
I do not know. How terrible this is — I do not know. Part of me says that God has delivered many others, but the other part says that maybe I’m the Christian who finally snapped his patience. That is the problem with the deeps. It is hard to identify anything or anyone. This place is perilous. Paul says we don’t grieve without hope and I have every hope for mom, it’s true. I don’t know that I have enough left for me. But it is not my hope.
Here it is I find that hope dies. It does. My hope died. I don’t know how else to put it. Jesus died, and he was a person of hope and truth. All I can come up with is that sometimes in our lives we walk into that same place where Jesus walked first, and we die and die and die. Even Jesus died. Can you imagine what it’s like not to know that he would be raised? That is where I am, in the days of hell. My spirit is in tatters, I gather its threadbare rags around me and sag against the King.
Hope dies. It does. I don’t know how else to put it. Jesus died, and he was a person of hope and truth. All I can come up with is that sometimes in our lives we walk into that same place where Jesus walked first, and we die and die and die. Jesus died. Can you imagine what it’s like not to know that he would be raised? That is where I am, in the days of hell. My spirit is in tatters, I gather its threadbare rags around me and sag against the King.
This place I am in is desperate, it cannot be sugar coated. All I can manage to do is whisper in the watches of the night that I will yet trust the Lord. I am undone. Hopeless, yet I do not grieve without hope, for God is with me. My feelings are hopeless, my position is not. My grief says that I must’ve done something horrible to make this happen. My God says resurrection will come.
In the deeps I see by faith a face. It is wet with an ocean of tears, and when I can meet its gaze, it is full of compassion and affirmation. He whispers “the light is going to be made next.” Darkness is over the face in the deep, but the Spirit of God is moving. Genesis is coming. I pray for the courage to endure.
Love,
L.Raine
Photo by Jeremy Bishop
