Sometimes I think that I won’t ever be amazed again. That in my jaded little world I have seen enough to no longer be surprised. But, when I least expect it, God still surprises me.
I thought I was getting close to the end of my faith. I don’t doubt that God is real and “out there, somewhere.” I just wasn’t sure that God was knowable, and thus questioned how I could ever trust an unknowable God to really be good. I mean, let’s be honest, even if you trust that God as described in the Bible is the one running things, well, that God’s a little schizophrenic. Does he commanded the deaths of thousands of people for their sins or does he sacrifice himself for all people forever? How do you reconcile “God is love, in him there is no darkness” with “’vengeance is mine,’ thus saith the Lord”?
And to be honest, anyone who is a believer and reads honestly the Bible should struggle to hold these things in tension.
So, when I was trying for ten months to understand how to hold these things in tension and reconcile them into some sort of understanding about who God is, I felt like my ‘faith’ was falling apart. Do I believe in God? Yes. Do I know what I believe about God? Eh, not so much.
Then one of my best friends went into the hospital with a pulmonary embolism at 29. I stopped caring whether I knew who God was. If someone was out there with the ability to influence the situation, I was willing to try talking to them.
And to be frank, I had decided I was going to bug the hell out of this being, until they gave me what I wanted. (Still haven’t given up on that. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? Or the obnoxious widow gets her justice, so the judge can sleep. Whatever your metaphor, I’m still determined to bug the hell out of the deity, until I get what I want.)
The biggest question in my life went from ‘who is God’ to ‘why the hell has my 29 year old friend got a pulmonary embolism.’
As the doctors eliminated options we began to hold our breath. Lymphatic cancer or lupus. Both options honestly suck. They are both very serious and scary. But ultimately lupus is far less likely to kill you. We hoped it was lupus.
Do you know how much it sucks to hope your friend has lupus? Do a little research on lupus.
But after weeks of waiting for tests and test results, we were informed that, yes, it was lupus. It was not cancer.
And as the truth of that set in, I felt… I don’t really even know if I can describe it. I’m still in the middle of that. But the truth of it has made me pray. I don’t care if the deity is benign or indifferent. I fully intend to bug the hell out of that being until they listen to me.
Which means that I pray. I pray a lot. I find myself praying for other concerns as well. Because apparently the deity and I, we talk. Well, I talk. The deity listens. I assume. I hope.
And this new thing, this grief I feel over my friend, it’s changing me. It’s making me more compassionate and simultaneously, less compassionate.
I am beginning to see how common chronic illnesses are. People with a chronic condition are not easy to live with. How do you help someone just enough, but not too much? How do you let them make decisions for themselves, without commenting when you think there might be a better option? When you love someone, it’s really hard to see them suffer. Everyone knows this. But until you live it, you really don’t know it. And people who want to complain about their condition and ask questions like, "Why is God let this happen to me?" I just want to slap them. You are not the only person who is suffering. Why does God let anyone suffer, if God has the ability to change it? I cannot answer this question. Which is what makes this next thing so odd.
I’m coming to realize that I do believe in the goodness of God. That this should come under such circumstances is, I suppose, what has surprised me the most.
Do I believe this out of necessity? No. I’m too realistic to believe that. I have heard 'no' too many times in my life to believe that my friend will be miraculously healed, unless it is just the 'will of God.' Yet, I continue to pray for this. It is a paradox which I honestly can’t explain.
But in the end I think it comes down to Jesus. Because of Jesus, there is a God who knows what suffering is. Is he the “most moved mover?” I don’t know. I should probably try reading Open Theism again. Maybe I would finally understand what it was about. In any case, Jesus suggests to me that God is moved by suffering and if things are not changed as a result of that, then perhaps more is going on than I understand.
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