When “Why” is your Biggest Hurdle with God

I woke early on Easter morning. It was not the kind of, “Oh! I get, like, an hour more of sleep! I love this feeling!” But more, “Hey, there is absolutely no one else up! Listen. Hear that? It’s the sound of NOTHING. I think I will wake up and enjoy it.” This was before I knew the kids drank the last of the milk = no coffee for me.

Maybe because the light in our bedroom felt hopeful and springtime-ish–and because I wanted to make the most of this day–I thought of the light in the garden, that morning Jesus rose. Yes. I am totally #thatmom.

And as my thoughts kept snowballing (story of my life)–I felt something I didn’t expect.

Healing.

“You Put This There”

So I guess this is the part where I confess to you a bruised and confusing part of the whole “We think your son might have lymphoma” debacle a couple of months ago.

After we found out the lymphoma was actually an extra rib (yes, that’s a thing)–two CT scans, an ultrasound, and a lot of scary appointments later–I was unquestionably overjoyed. Cartwheeling, let’s-blow-bubbles-and-get-doughnuts-and-dream-about-future-grandchildren happy. I called family, sent out mass texts, wrote a blog post to you.

But when I closed the door of my heart and went into that quiet room where God and I meet? (It is a woodshop in my mind. I could blame Max Lucado for this, in all those Wimmick books. Or maybe my husband, who smells like such a mighty-good-man with an extra layer of sawdust.) I was asking God something like this: Um. Hey. You put this there.

You knit this thing to him, and knew this would happen in 2019.

The fear of this thing took off, like, two years of my life. 

Why would you want us to go through that?

Why–?

The woodshop version of God, in my mind, wipes his hands on his apron. Looks at me.

What I Would Give

I know there are a lot of very biblical and solid answers for this. I can quote you most of them. I know suffering gives us character and hope and endurance, etcetera etcetera (Romans 5:5). I know Job suffered in part due to a cosmic battle between God and Satan. I know Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac (where God knew that Abraham would go through with it) would foreshadow Christ.

But I think of Mary Beth Chapman’s response, reported to me second-hand after she lost her daughter. I am so thankful for all the changed lives and all God’s done with this (someone-told-me-she-said).

But I would give all of that to have my daughter back.

Abraham was the figure I’d focused on this cancer scare, imagining his emotions, too, as God asked me to surrender my son into God’s hands. I thought of the blatant fear and even anger Abraham may have experienced, the helplessness. The need to just get up in the morning again, when a sunrise just signals another day to endure.

And I realized, God doesn’t think like my culture.

“Pain and Suffering” Payments

See, when I was 37 weeks pregnant with my first, we were in a car accident.

I injured my hand, but thankfully–so much, thankfully–my son was safe. The insurance company not only paid for the overnight in the hospital, but paid me for “pain and suffering”, like courts do. (I now know this is more like “please don’t sue us” money when coming from insurance companies, but I digress.)

When my son was (praise God, praise God) diagnosed with not-cancer?

I did not receive a check in the mail.

(There may, I acknowledge, be one coming. So to speak.)

The Weekend from You-Know-Where

So, now that you have followed my bunny trails, I hop back to Easter morning. (See what I did there?) The first one.

I imagined Mary from the book of John, somehow either toting spices already, or purchasing them early in the morning, because she wouldn’t have purchased them on Passover. She can smell them, their weight soft in bags thudding against her thighs.

I imagine that this walk with her friends is not only dutiful after she has been wrung out, exhausted from grieving and what-nexts. I imagine it is brave.

Because we know the disciples spend the weekend with the door locked. Their hearts had been gutted, and they now feared for their own lives, from guilt by association. Would the leaders of the synagogue seize them, too? I imagine they spent a lot of Saturday looking into a cookfire, or perhaps being listless or short with one another, all of them feeling carved out inside.

I imagine all  the women of the past who have had to tenderly wash their loved ones’ bodies with water and tears, loss flowing over the hard shell of the person they knew.

One More Thing

Mary arrives at the tomb to fresh horror. Someone has stolen this one consolation from her. One more thing, that proverbial straw.

And that’s where my imagination found her that morning, weeping for not just this new robbery, but all of it. All of her fear and grief and lost hope is dripping onto her hands.

It’s where she sees two blindingly attired men. And then, a gardener. (We know she is mistaken. But maybe not. Isn’t he the First Gardener?)

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

I like that he asks this, even though he knows.

I imagine her ugly-crying, a little like I did. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

And I love this, too: “Mary.”

“It Had to Happen This Way”

I love this word. In a single uttering of her name, suddenly, I imagine the world cracks open for Mary. Can you imagine her speechlessness? Her awe? Her sudden tsunami of understanding, and then the slow trickle of awe that would happen for the rest of her life?

I imagine suddenly all of the broken pieces of her mind began to stand up, assembling themselves: It had to happen this way.

All the literal hell they had endured, the blackness and fear and guttural tears, must have suddenly begun to heal and right themselves. And not just heal: to construct something better than before.

It had to happen this way. 

Maybe, like me, you have “Why’s” in your life that loom so large, occasionally they begin to block out light and sound and even love.

It’s funny: I’m thinking of those woodshop hands again. But I look up a little farther from the callouses. On the wrists, there: Holes.

Scars on him. Big enough to carry my “why’s.”

The biblical view of things is resurrection–not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater.

Timothy Keller (emphasis added)*

This week, in your why’s, may you hear God speak your name. May you have what you need to trust him through your Saturday, until your stunning Sunday.

Like this post? You might like

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• FREE PRINTABLE INFOGRAPHIC: On Unanswered Prayer–and 5 Memos to Myself When God Says “No”
• When God Isn’t Who You Thought He Was: On Spiritual Bewilderment and Anger
• When I don’t get God
• Cry: On the Hidden Art of Christian Lament
• On Keeping Your Heart Soft When Times are Tough
• How Am I Supposed to Have Joy When My World’s a Wreck?

*Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Penguin Books (2009).