You know how you can pinpoint the exact place and time you were when you learned about the events on September 11th? Certain days become frozen in time; indelible impressions that mark a change. On 9-11 I was leaving to shop for a washing machine. My in-laws were visiting. My mother-in-law was upstairs ironing. There aren’t many events in life that leave impressions as unforgettable as this one was for me. There comes the realization that something horrible is happening—that forms the lump in your throat; the pit in your stomach: The thing that rocks your boat.
A few months ago I learned that my baby-hungry little sister would not be able to have any more children. My heart ached as I watched hers break. I felt sick as I watched her hurdle endless health-related obstacles that kept being thrust mercilessly into her path; prior to that I found out that my dad had yet another form of cancer to fight. It was hard to learn that my brother was in the hospital fighting a mysterious infection that I was helpless to do anything about. There was the Sunday night phone call that dropped my only Uncle’s pancreatic cancer bomb–I wish we could divide his battle into tiny pieces and fight it together. I cheer robustly every time my sweet little nephew with hydranencephaly makes it through another bout of pneumonia and then another birthday. Life spews out hard stuff. Sometimes the hard stuff hits closer to home than others… I wonder everyday why this constant wave of tragedy and hardship isn’t divided more equally amongst us? I marvel at all that is endured on an individual basis and wonder how I drew such a clean hand? I can cope with a house full of the stomach bug. I can deal with head lice. I can make casseroles and tend children and host unplanned guests. I’ll do things that might seem inconvenient, hard or just plain annoying. But how? How can I maintain balance when I feel helpless to stop death, disease, heartache and pain?
I was at a museum with my children last week; watching as they laughed and joked with each other, moving giant-sized chess pieces around a room-sized board when I got the phone call that marked a change. Mandy, my friend, my visiting teacher had succumbed to the liver disease that was tormenting her body. She had been number one on the donor list. Certainly being number one meant she was next; that the transplant was days, hours, minutes away. Surely a young, vibrant mother of four school-aged children couldn’t have finished her time on earth so soon?
I re-read a short book as I was climbing into bed the other night. The opening lines read like this:
Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Floodwaters await in our avenues.
I started to weep. Thunder has rumbled my mountains. The eaves of my personal house are rattling so loudly I can hardly hear myself think. The floodwaters that are my tears; they are waiting in the avenues of my emotions. And hoo boy does my village feel unprotected.
Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and gray and threatening.
I finished the book. I lay in bed trying to turn off my thoughts. The room was spinning. The title of the book by Maya Angelou is Amazing Peace. I wasn’t feeling it. I reread it, and inserted the word “hope” in the place of peace; and then again tried with “faith.” It’s hard to realize that despite devastating events, the world keeps turning. People go about their days. Awful things happen, and people still buy donuts. Harder things and more horrific events are occurring everywhere in the world, but this one thing has rocked mine.
We question ourselves. What have we done to so affront nature?
We interrogate and worry God.
Are you there? Are you there, really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?
Maya Angelou writes “Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters”
For me I know the correct wording of this phrase is “Christ enters.”
Christ has felt this anguish. Christ has lived the uncertainty, the fear, and the fragile reality that is mortality. He has suffered through these moments already. Knowing this makes the heavy moments a little less heavy. There exists for me, somehow, the knowledge that this amazing gift won’t make these hard things easier, just a little more tolerable. My shoulders can bear the burdens; my neck can hold up my head. My fragile boat is rocking, but I’m staying in.
Related posts:
Continue reading at the original source →