To Whom Shall I Go?

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.

On This Day, Two Years Ago

Today marks two years since my Aunt Shell passed away. Two years since I got a phone call from my dad and knew what he was going to say before the words tumbled out of his mouth. Two years since I wept in a stairwell before driving to their house where I would weep even more. 

After she died, I saw her everywhere - a woman with a similar haircut at church, someone her height in an aisle at Target, someone driving the same car as hers. I dreamed about her, my brain trying to process her loss when I wasn’t even conscious, and woke up in tears wondering if that would be the last time. Eventually - I’m not sure when - I stopped seeing her at every corner and dreaming about her. Honestly there’s some relief in it; it’s been months since I’ve felt that drop in my stomach after glancing at a blond woman across the room and realizing it isn’t her, can’t be her. 

After she died our pastor told us that grief never ends, the waves just get less intense and farther apart. I wonder if this is what he meant.

So much has happened in these two years without her. I was pregnant and gave birth to Abigail, Emily and Aaron graduated high school, Ryan graduated law school and married Kim, there were birthdays and Christmases and Disney vacations. At every missed event her absence was felt, sharply, painfully. The pain of today is different though, almost a dull ache. 

Two years ago, we felt the sting of death. And though we don’t grieve as those who have no hope, we do still grieve. Today is achy - and honestly every day is achy in its own way since losing her - and though I know Jesus has the final say and death will lose, today still hurts. 

We’re a little more than halfway through the Advent season and ‘tis the season for us all to talk a lot about the already, but not yet Kingdom of God. Jesus has already died and rose from the dead defeating sin and death, but we are not yet in the new heaven and new earth where there is no death or sin or tears. The tension between these two truths, which are both truths to be sure, is weighty and awkward and hurts more than I think I can bear some days. That day two years ago felt an awful lot like just a “not yet” day, but the “already” was there too. 

Today I will put on a shirt that used to be hers. I will be led in worship by sweet Emily at our church. And then I will eat way too much pasta at her favorite Italian place because the day would be just too sad without some good old fashioned carbs. This is the already, not yet. It is hard and sad and good and glorious all at the same time. Thanks be to God. 

Longing for Home

A few days after we announced my pregnancy to the world, there was a For Sale sign stuck into the grass in our front yard. A man showed up to our house to take photos of the rooms, and those photos were uploaded on a house listing. Strangers I’ll never meet have stepped foot in the closet where my clothes hang, the bathroom where I first learned there was a baby in my belly, the kitchen where I learned how to bake bread.

My husband and I are renting this house, and soon we’ll pack up our things and try again to make a home somewhere else.

I shouldn’t be so sentimental about a rental house, but we made this place a home and had no intention of leaving it so quickly. There’s an unmistakable feeling of being uprooted, of having the rug pulled out from under our feet yet again.

When I imagined the next few years of my life, I always imagined them against the backdrop of this home. I planned how we would arrange the furniture to turn one of the rooms into a nursery - a comfy chair in the corner by the window, changing table against that wall, crib other there. I imagined bringing home the baby growing in my belly to the familiar white walls and beige carpet. I imagined more dinners with my husband in the kitchen, celebrating Christmas this year in the living room, and watching more movies with our friends sprawled out on the couches.

When I saw the For Sale sign stuck in our yard, I was angry, the kind of angry that makes your heart beat fast in your chest and your eyes well up with tears. I blamed my anger on the sign, an exclamation point at the end of dashed hope that maybe we could stay here a little longer. When I finally got quiet and honest with myself, I was really angry at God.

Every morning it seems I wake up with a list running through my mind full of unmet expectations. I expected more years with my husband before taking on the titles of both wife and mom. I expected my aunt and uncle to be in my life for decades longer. I expected my job to be fulfilling rather than frustrating. I expected pregnancy to be easier physically than it has turned out to be. And I expected to live in this home for years, saving pennies away to hopefully buy a home later when we felt ready.

It seems no corner of my life has been left untouched by suffering these days. And yes, I trust that the Lord is good and loving and sovereign over each of these events and yes, I know each of these things can foster a greater dependence on him, and yes, I know there are still good things, candles in the darkness. But those words are so much easier to say than to live into, and I still find myself waking up to painful reminders of unmet expectations every morning.

Last week I texted one of my best friends a long list of all the things going wrong, all the things happening and not happening, all the things I want to stop and the things I fear will never stop. At the end of it, I was expecting her to echo back to me my own shame but she didn’t. She said all the things I had mentioned were really hard, and I cried.

Every new wave of suffering kept knocking the breath out of me, but life carried on as normal. There was no break, no slowness to process all the things that were happening. There were still dishes to do and laundry to wash and hours to work and prenatal vitamins to take. I felt like I had to carry on as normal too, talking to friends the same way, working the same way, praying the same way. I never made space to acknowledge I am sad and angry and confused.

My friend acknowledged it for me, and I think the Lord’s comfort is like that too. He has been present, witnessing the pain of his children and weeping with us. He never asked me to pretend like everything was great.

Nothing has been fixed, and if I’m honest, I don’t even feel all that much better. I am still sad and angry and exhausted. Acknowledging pain doesn’t make it go away, but I think it is a step in a good direction. I found myself echoing the psalmist this morning and praying, “How long, O Lord?” because I want things to be different, easier. They’re not yet and they may never be, but it was an honest prayer and I think God is after our honesty.

I don’t know what house I will be living in in a few months. I don’t know where the crib will be set up or what door I’ll walk through when the baby inside me has made his or her entrance into the world. It’s a hard place to be. Even in that hardness, what I know is that my heart is ultimately longing for home, true home, and that longing will not go unmet.