I See You

"I long for the years gone by when God took care of me, when He lighted the way before me and I walked safely through the darkness....And now my heart is broken.  Depression haunts my days.  My weary nights are filled with pain as though something were gnawing on my bones...I cry to You, O God, but You don't answer me.  I stand before You and You don't bother to look." -Job 29:2&3; 30:16&17, 20.

The book of Job is hard now for the same reason it's helpful: Relevance.  It's reassuring to hear "the finest man in all the earth" (God's assessment, not mine) throwing shade at his Creator.  And there isn't a definitive timeline given for this book, although scholars speculate about a year.  So I imagine Job's rants being spaced out over MONTHS, not just like an angry weekend at "the shack."  Job sat with this rage and sadness and confusion for a long time.  And while I realize we aren't necessarily meant to reside within the gray, uncomfortable areas represented by various accounts in Scripture, I do believe these things are included for a reason.

Church is difficult.  A friend put it this way, "It's a face-to-face confrontation with the God who allowed Margot to be taken from you."  I don't think He wanted that for our family; I don't think He spitefully intended to cause pain.  But it's a wrestling match -emotionally, mentally, and physically- to get through the doors.  It's a reminder that we prayed our guts out for this girl, the earth did, and still she is gone.  Worship songs come across like a slap in the face:

Before I spoke a word, You were singing over me
You have been so, so good to me
Before I took a breath, You breathed Your life in me
You have been so, so kind to me

David and I look back on the "before," when we strongly connected with Jesus through song.  His presence was tangible: Margot kicking around in my belly, Elijah beside us belting out praises.  Now those words feel empty, false.  They make us protectively hunch over ourselves and cry, shadow figures of a previous life.

Well-meaning but knee-jerk responses to suffering -"God has a plan" or "everything works together for good" or "they're in a better place"- attempt to put a band-aid fix over a gushing wound.  Not that ultimately these phrases are untrue, but they fail to address -and may diminish- the immediacy and magnitude of a friend's sorrow.  And when voiced by a person unacquainted with the particular trauma you're experiencing, they resemble a spiritual shield.  A barrier that keeps uncomfortable situations -like yours- within their realm of an understandable religious narrative.  These biblical colloquialisms tend to offer most comfort to the ones expressing them, rather than the ones receiving them.  Because when your reality has burned to the ground, hearing "everything happens for a reason" isn't helpful.  It hurts.  Which is why I find Job's words, his animosity, comforting.  He is accurately, LOUDLY, unabashedly vocalizing grief.  This kind of raw display scares people, his friends included, but obviously not his Maker.  The One who created us in all our emotional complexity, from fear and frustration to affection and agitation.  

My biggest obstacle since Margot has been that very complexity.  I understand it within myself and David and Elijah.  But I don't have a great frame of reference for it within my God.  One who can both give a miracle pregnancy and then allow for it to be stripped away.  A holy Being encompassed by many disparities: Righteous love and anger, complete mercy and justice, at once a nurturing Mother and disciplining Father.  Discerning how the nature of this unfathomable One butts up against the outworking of sin in our fallen world is a lifelong endeavor with NO easy answers.  Hence, the book of Job.  God didn't eliminate the many chapters of Job's despair in order to fast-forward to a grand revelation of His Almighty greatness, although sermons tend to focus on that portion of the story.  He let us bear witness to the grief of Job, the wailing discomfort of his aching soul.  In this, I feel understood.  Or at least feel room to honestly verbalize my intense pain without holding back.  And during this sacred struggle, I want to believe God is here.  Because faith isn't certainty, but a hope that Jesus is present in the good as well as the bad.  Hebrews says faith "is the evidence of things we cannot yet see," like us searching for fingerprints of the Divine even in the absence of our daughter.  Let me be clear: We desire a reconnection with our Creator, to bask in being securely held by Him.  We see proof of Love in the world: Our friends and family persevering with us, the kind actions of strangers, the steady sunshine of spring.  But the once deep assurance of the residing Prince of Peace remains missing from our daily lives and hearts, just as our dearest Margot does.  The void of loss equally draining and consuming, leaving space for little else.

But within the mess, I've been granted an offering.  A holy insight, perhaps?  (Maybe that's going too far.) I've clung to this tidbit ever since it came to mind, grateful for the unique perspective it brings.  Which is: Even before Mary's miraculous pregnancy, Jesus was given a fatal diagnosis.  He was literally born to die.  Not just that, but JC's true Father willingly handed His only son over to those responsible for this very diagnosis.  The ones who would cruelly bring His Son's death to pass.  And, conversely, with complete awareness of this untimely end, Jesus still chose to be born.  He became the reality of a speculative statement an acquaintance made about Margot: That, before conception, "the most innocent souls can observe the universe and make a choice to come to a particular set of persons.  With full knowledge of whether their experience will be a long or short one, they let love lead them." And, while skeptical over the substance, we appreciated the sentiment behind that thought in regards to our daughter.  That our hope and love somehow brought us together. However, in the very real case of Jesus, the loving relationship was one-sided. Humanity would mock and hate Him, yet He came anyway. He'd hang on the cross, holding the weight of every past and future sin, and His perfect Father would turn His face away from the darkness.  Jesus experienced the abandonment of God. All this, for my benefit. And for yours.

This transcendent trauma puts members of the Trinity on familiar ground for us.  Not by any means do David and I claim to have complete understanding of the metaphysical atonement made on our behalf, but we do get the nightmare of losing a child.  The desolation of letting another human take their lifeless body away. The complete black hole of spiritual detachment you're left in afterwards. And that anyone would CHOOSE the pain of our current circumstances, even to save the entire planet, is incomprehensible.  But Scripture says this is exactly what happened. And while that doesn't make me FEEL any differently, I do see it as a starting point. A recognition that God isn't separate from our suffering, that Jesus was as present with Margot when her heart started beating as when it stopped.  That death and life are two-sides of the same coin, separated only by time and human perception. That grief in any form -anger, sadness, denial- is really just an expression of love. We can hold these disparities and remain whole people, reflections of the vast intricacies of our Creator.  But like Job, I need to sit for awhile in the ashes until the truth resonates with me again. Margot's loss has stolen so much. However, the knowledge that Jesus sees me today -disheveled, inappropriate, frantic, medicated me- as completely worthy of His sacrifice, means everything. In her memoir, Accidental Saints, Nadia Bolz-Weber says it this way:

"To hear I was loved meant something very particular 
because of the context in which I heard it,

as though {He} was saying,

'You are a mess, and you are loved.

You have a little issue with anger, and you are loved...

You think you are going through this alone but you are wrong, and you are loved.

The thing you are experiencing right now seems so big,

but what is bigger is that you are loved.' "

The last few months, I've come out of my corner swinging.  I've told Jesus, my friends and family, this bloggy audience, even random strangers what I think about God.  Not kind things, never kind things. Yet He absorbed every blow, like He did with Job, not using a block, but a patient embrace.  And if He can hold my precious, sassy, busy Margot forever, maybe -just maybe- He can hold me and my mad too.