Four weeks. It’s been four weeks since I last saw my Dad and my big brother. Four weeks since an easter egg hunt in the backyard at my parent’s house. Four weeks since my brother held his son’s hands and cheered while he took wobbly steps toward my mom. Four weeks since my dad asked me to make him a cup of tea. Four weeks since we sat down to the last meal my brother would make for us.
Tomorrow it will be four weeks since I got the call from my mom. Four weeks since a man, under the influence of methamphetamine, drove a dump truck through a stop sign at the precise moment my dad and my big brother were driving home from work. Four weeks since that truck flipped onto their car, killing them both.
Four weeks since I prayed for them, for hours, not knowing they were already dead. Four weeks since I shook with rage and grief and tears. Four weeks since time split in half, one track in my mind continuing into the direction of how everything should be and the other track stuck in the nightmare of this reality that doesn’t feel real.
How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?
That’s the question people keep asking, and I keep not knowing how to answer. I finally settled on, “hanging in there!” because it’s just vague enough that the other person doesn’t feel uncomfortable while also carrying the tiny seed of truth that I’m barely hanging on by a thread.
The thread is this one moment in the gospel of John that has been on repeat in my head. Jesus was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum and had just finished saying “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” And it says they talked among themselves about this being a “hard teaching,” and then many of them “turned back and no longer walked with him.”
Then there’s this moment when Jesus looks at the twelve disciples and says, “Do you want to go away as well?” and Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
He doesn’t say, “Lord, I totally understand this teaching and I think it’s a really great one and I’m definitely going to keep following you.” He doesn’t pretend to understand or even agree, but he says, “To whom shall we go?”
I rarely read the gospels and see myself in Peter. But this passage - right now - is something I am clinging to and saying to myself over and over and over.
I don’t understand. I am angry. So angry. I want to scream and smash things. I want the comfort of the Lord and yet he feels so absent, like a door slammed in my face the moment I need him the most. I don’t understand that either. I wish it weren’t so. I wish I could feel that peace that passes understanding. I wish I could pray. I wish I could hear the still small voice of God instead of this deafening silence.
But Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life, and I have believed and I have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.
That’s all I have right now. May it be enough.
