why am i still here, God?

saturday musings #6 -- observations on lingering grief and layered healing.

You’ve never let me go, not even for a moment. In all this pain, in the clinging to the edge, looking for something to hang onto to make it through the night, you are here, in this moment. You’ve never left me. I can trust you to stay. You’re doing something. I can’t see it now. But you’ve never wasted my pain, Not once have you my winter seasons been counted for nothing. You’re not finished with me yet.

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Waking up every morning and realizing that yesterday’s reality is the same as today’s—hating that you’re still here.

Squeezing your eyes shut and just begging God to take it—no, you—away.

Then you begin to swim to the surface, through promising yourself that it won’t always be like this, that there is a hope that is waiting.

Lessons surface and reveal themselves, prompting you to grow and mature into someone who has determined what you will do and who you will become.

Aaand then, the exhaustion sets in….because the hurt is still there. You thought you were so far along that experiencing all of these negative emotions was behind you.

Will the Lord cast off forever?
And will He be favorable no more?
Has His mercy ceased forever?
Has His promise failed forevermore?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?

Psalm 77 rings through my heart as I am on my knees, carrying a hurt that just won’t disappear. Toiling throughout the day, no matter how mentally occupied I am, I always come back to myself and find the ache still lodged in my heart, cozily nestled as if it’ll be there forever.

They say there are stages to grief. I think it’s true of healing too. You mourn many facets of a loss, shift, change, separation, etc., not just It, in and of itself.

Grieving variables of a broken thing.

It takes our whole self to grieve, if the grief is great enough. Minds, bodies, souls, all.

As somebody who has spent so much of her time fleeing hurt, pain, and suffering, my instinct for self-preservation kicks in and all I desire to do is run, run, run. Sprinting away in fear, I leave behind my wounded heart that is bleeding out in the dirt, not thinking twice what the repercussions will be by not tending to it. Whether it’s a universal human condition or just my personality type, outrunning what I think is my greatest fear is my gut response. I say, what I think, because what ends up happening is that the hurt eventually stops me in my tracks, although it may be much farther down the line, when I’ve got to dig up my heart that is now all but suffocated under years of buried earth that represent years of neglect. Maybe I’m starting to realize that what I really fear is a heart that is dead from lack of intentional care.

What do I mean by caring for my heart intentionally? Do I mean do some journaling?

rant to my mom about why I’m angry?

summon up the courage to go out and conquer all who hurt me?

stand up for the abuse I’ve supposedly suffered?

create a social media post enumerating on why I’m so great and denouncing the world and the hurt everyone has incurred on me?

just take a hot bath, cover my eyes with cucumbers, and have a glass of wine?

Well, I suppose those are some ways to go about it. But ultimately, those particular alternatives don’t seem to have put me or anyone else on any lasting healing trajectory (unfortunately).

I’ve been taking a class from Hillsdale college on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The professor made an observation that Dante’s travels through all three otherworldly realms progressed in circles, not in a straight line, as other hero’s journeys often do. He noted this because it is so realistic to how we ourselves journey in the real world: most of the time, we do not learn linearly and then move directly into the next stage of our better and improved lives. Past sins, failings, addictions, and desires assail us all the way up into Paradise, because that is the nature of still being unperfected. Many times, we learn, grow, and then along the way, demons rise up from historical times we thought were firmly behind us, and we must brave them once again, passing the test in order to forward our pilgrimage to the next gate ahead. The passage in the Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian facing the two lion creatures who stand on either side of a gateway in which he must pass through, comes to mind in this case.

And yet, Dante progresses higher and higher.

Growth happens, but not linearly, as much as we so desire it could.

Relinquishing a timeline where healing comes overnight, past hurts are not only forgiven but forgotten, and everyone can just move right along on their merry way, has been a difficult task for me. It’s a task that I didn’t want, a truth that I would prefer not to face.

Ah, there’s that classic ‘Christianeeze’ answer: But God.

I’ve used this analogy before in another article, and it holds down it’s own here, as well: there are too many times where I leave Jesus far behind in my race to get the heck out of my current set of circumstances because they are painful to acknowledge and bear. The issue? Jesus isn’t about to run to keep up with me in my hasty retreat when He’s got something else for me that is exceedingly abundantly above everything I could ask or think, if only I choose to stop running and stand still long enough to peel my ears so I can hear Him.

Photo by Amin Moshrefi

Growing curious about what my body feels, the pain I want to ignore, has been a cool touch in the heat of the moment.

Slow.

Slow down,

Wait on me,

I’m here, if you are willing to see,

He whispers.

And I said, “This is my anguish;
But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.”
I will remember the works of the Lord;
Surely I will remember Your wonders of old. (Psalm 77v10-11)

Converse to poison invading the blood, healing infiltrates the body, cleansing as it goes. Physical illness is not the only sort of sick to take what sometimes feels like eons of time to reverse. Oftentimes, even when healing comes, there are scars that never leave our bodies. Mental affliction is not less in this regard.

Rather than putting expectation upon my body and my mind to forget all, forgive all, fix all, or learn all, my Maker invites me to dwell with Him, even in the deeps. He doesn’t meet me on the other side when I’ve bandaged myself up and moved on; He himself comes and sits with me as I’m crouched weeping over the brokenness of it all, and the wracking pain that threatens to drown me.

Remembrance.

This is what the act of Communion is.

But maybe Communion is something that we can partake of in the form of our suffering alongside the Christ?

‘That my suffering, united to Your own, will bear fruit in this life and the life to come,’ a paraphrase from a line from the Litany of Trust.

Verse 10 and 11 of Psalm 77 boasts three times the use of the word ‘remember’ in just two verses. Repetitive phrases in Scripture are noteworthy. There is something worth paying attention to in remembering amidst intense suffering or ‘anguish’.

Many times the Psalmist speaks of the right hand of God upholding him, and here we get a little glimpse into the usage of that common phrase.

Not only that, in particular that little article, ‘but’.

Its like the Psalmist says, “I am in this deep dark wounded place, yet in spite of being in that place, I will recall to mind the history of God’s continued and assured faithfulness to me and the promise of good things to come because He is a God of blessing and newness.” That’s just my own spin on the verses, but I like to imagine it’s what would be said in more modern terms.

You hold my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I have considered the days of old,
The years of ancient times.
I call to remembrance my song in the night;
I meditate within my heart,
And my spirit makes diligent search. (Psalm 77v4-6

Songs in the night conjure also the Psalmist’s mention of his couch being drenched with weeping, as well as this quote that I love so much, strange as it is, because it is so dark and heartbreaking,

“But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?” (Return of the King, J.R.R Tolkien).

He holds even our eyelids open, a minuscule part of the human body, when we are so weak that even that, we cannot manage. What kind of God stoops to such a level? One that we meditate upon and sets our spirit on diligent search.

It takes immense humility and bravery to sit (not pity oneself, there is a healthy difference, I think) upon the ashes of your castles in the sky and allow the grace of God to carry you.

Eventually, He will carry me out.

But today is not that day.

Today, it’s just another day of leaning on Him as a sick man leans on a trusted friend, and hoping that one day I may be blessed enough to run and leap alongside Him.

Uncertainty is where faith is really born, and for the moment, I have to die to my pride and fear so that He can hold my eyelids open, even as I long to shut it all out.

The present is often more painful that the hypothetical future. But that’s just it— hypothetical: it’s an imaginary time for a being who is confined by the only guarantee we have and that is the moment we find ourselves in, whether it be pleasurable or painful.

A heart that is humble to learn what it means to be dependent. That is blessed in the Kingdom of God.

Your way was in the sea,
Your path in the great waters,
And Your footsteps were not known. (Psalm 77v19)

He treads where we fear to, and not only this, but He beckons for us to follow Him. Who knows where He leads, but I only to need to know Who leads, even though knowledge of destination has never been promised.

When we ignore pain, we ignore the kindness Jesus is waiting to reveal to us. When we invite Him in, this is where real healing can begin. Patiently, I await Him.

He will come.

Because He has before.