I am (grateful)

One month shy of a year ago today – my whole world stopped. I woke up at 4 that morning to work, trying to meet a deadline for my dissertation. I woke up that morning with my father in the same time and dimension I was in. When I went to bed that night – after calls, taxi rides, flights and untold tears – for the first time in my life, he was no longer. He was completely beyond reach – no longer in this world, my world, space, dimension or time. The world stopped the day my daddy died - and I’m still not certain that it has started spinning again.

And since that moment when I gathered myself from the floor in order to fly home – since my stepbrother was struck dead by lightning six days later, since I took my mother in for surgery the day after I laid my father to rest, since my grandmother who’d all but raised me, was diagnosed with terminal cancer just six weeks following and left this world six months later, since I began this unwanted apprenticeship in becoming a funeral planning specialist – since that moment, I’ve been hanging, suspended in a world that makes no conceivable sense, where many days I’m unable to catch my breath, or think or cry or speak, where I can do no more than simply, tremble.

In those times when the unimaginable seems to keep happening, again and again and again, there is the temptation to ask: Why me? For the young, those unaccustomed to the reality that pain and death and loss arrive simply because they must – the why me/why us can be an exhalation attempting to understand if some wrong has been committed. Are we being punished because we have offended God? For those more seasoned – the why me can is often an expression of uncertainty: What, Lord, am I supposed to learn from all this? What, Lord, are you trying to teach me?

As I lay on the floor two days ago, crippled by my sobs, immobile and gasping for breath on the side of my bed as a tiny puddle began to form around my face, I cried asking: how Lord could you remove both of my safe places – the two people in my life who not only cared about me, but who also took care of me? The two people in the world who I could go to knowing I would be told to sit down, to sleep, to stop doing – because they would handle it (never even needing to ask what I needed), so that I’d wake and all would be in place and set straight. And all that was required of me, all they required of me, was to simply be. How Lord could you take away my only remaining spaces of safety and rest, leaving me bereft?

As I lay there, in that self-pitying, self-absorbed shameful ugly cry way I sometimes have – no longer young, far past seasoned – I still cried up and out to God: Why me?

When my tears finally stopped, and I lay down to sleep feeling indignant and lonely and self-pitying – I already knew my question was unjust.

We want to ask “Why me?” when tragedy strikes, when things go awry ... yet, there are no questions when things work out: when the scholarship comes through, when that thing/person you thought you’d never get over is somehow no longer even present in your distant memory, when the friend of your soul forgives you for those unforgivable deeds you did (intentional or not). I knew – know – there’s no justice in asking why me, why have you taken them from me? The real questions should be: Why Lord did I get to grow having safe spaces when so many folks I know have yet to find one? Why Lord did you allow us to work out and through and over barriers that have ruined and decimated others’ relationships? Why Lord did you grant me the ineffable fortune to grow up knowing that I was the apple of my daddy’s eye – so that I’d know what it was like to be valued, cherished and treasured so that if anyone ever treated me otherwise, I would have a correct standard to measure them by? Why did you allow me the gift of being able to sit beside my Barbara in her last few hours in this life, brushing her hair, massaging her hands and temples with oil, humming and singing to her, so that she’d know that it was okay to move from this world on to the next? The question should be: why did I get blessed with those 30 or nearly 30 years of their presence? If we are to question God, trouble the waters with a why me in loss, we must also ask it in gain. And when we do ... well, let’s just say I laid that question to rest...

Still, even if we know and accept that the death of those we love is neither punishment, nor the manifestation of some life tutorial, but rather part of a divine will that has little to do with us, save that we are left to mourn the absence of the presence of the ones now gone – that question lingers. Not about the events that have occurred, but about the present condition and the future prospects. How are we to make it over? What would you have me do in this place, in this time? Why Lord have you left me to go through this, like this?

I can’t pretend like I haven’t been pained and all but incapacitated the last few days mourning my daddy, missing my Barbara, asking: how? How, Lord, am I supposed to, how do you expect me to, get through this alone? I never imagined that when this time came I would be alone, that I’d have to walk this path by myself. How, Lord, could you let me go through this, through all this, in a foreign land, where the friends of my soul are out of reach, when there’s no one to come home to for comfort or security, where there is only me? I never thought that when the time came that I’d begin losing my parents, that I’d be in this place – so outside the nearness, the presence of union & communion, with nowhere to go when I needed to cry, with no arms to hold me up or hold me until the tears subside. How Lord and why like this?

Tonight – an answer: I am.

Here in this time, in this place, in this way because I am. And when you feel shaken, overwhelmed and overcome in the midst of it all – I am. I am steadfast, unshakable, power filled and life giving. You needed to know and see and believe, beyond your faith, I am here; I am present - hearing and seeing and feeling and knowing every instance of pain you go through. I am still in the business of miracles and transformation and mercy and grace. I am your rest and peace. And so, while it may seem that everything in your world has stopped and nothing makes sense, you can stand on this – I am. How? I am. From whom will your comfort come? I am. How will the world start spinning again? I am. How will you ever again find safety and rest? I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. YHWH.

YHWH-Yireh

YHWH

So, this Easter morning... I am grateful

~JJB © April 24, 2011