I read this the other day: This is love– to be entrusted with suffering. (I read it here) And I haven’t quite been able to get it out of my head just yet.
At first I read it and just glanced over what seemed to be a sentimental line by a dying parent. Then I read it again.
And again.
And I started to think about my own life…
Processing through the statement, I imagined myself in a place where there were 5 people who would say they loved me, 5 people who I’d say I loved. And which of these would endure suffering for the sake of that love? Which would I have the audacity to ask to go through pain for my name? Which would rise to the occasion and which would turn around and walk away?
I thought to Job… his response to suffering… those words Laurie put music to years ago, the tune of which gets stuck in my head in my most shallow moments, forcing me to more deeply live a life I sometimes like to skate through. Job’s words: Though he slay me, yet I will trust him.
Yich.
I don’t like those words. I don’t like the thought that goes along with it, don’t like the loss of control, don’t like the trust in a Power who may kill me, but holds my hope. I don’t like that at all.
God looked out at some point in the history of the world and saw the priests. He saw the youth ministers and the missionaries and the honest car salesmen and the kind bank officers and the single dads and the drunken moms, and he said Job. Go ahead and screw with Job’s world– make his kingdom crumble and his children die and let him endure such physical pain that he’s advised to just give it up and die.
And Job lost everything and had less than a supportive community around him while he was going through suffering, and he still loves. He doesn’t let go.
And let’s not even bring up Jesus. And while we’re there, the Hall of Those Who Loved Much (the lesser-quoted members of that Hall of Faith): those tortured, beaten, imprisoned, stoned to death, cut in half, killed with swords, hated, abused and forgotten. And the hundreds of people you and I can name who saw suffering and looked it in the eye and said Still I will trust him.
I.
Don’t.
Get.
That.
It doesn’t take much for me to cry out in pain and turn away.
One man of God who was supposed to shepherd a flock I watched him manipulate and abuse instead… at twelve I questioned Who would let this man happen to the people I loved.
One month of seeing everyone’s pain so deeply, seeing them check themselves into hospitals and attempt suicide and tell me they want nothing more to die, and I question the existence of a God who would not step in and do something so that I don’t lose the few people I’ve let myself care about… and my seventeen year old self shakes her fist at the presumably empty heavens.
One love that was supposed to be the last one, planning our lives together until out of nowhere it became so clear that the compromises we’d make to share our happy marriage would cost so much of the good we could do for our worlds apart… and so his world comes tumbling down, and so my world and so there’s a void and so the cost starts to pile up and the loss is much more than just one relationship, just one best friend, just one hundred horrible regrets and the wretched tornado that was those months… And at my 21 years, I swore I was through.
oh I ran from this God. From this God who asks so much and then demands even more. From this tyrant who waits until I gained the courage to trust and then rips the foundations of my earth away. From the God who thinks nothing of asking you to sacrifice your health, your child, your life… so that his name can be praised.
I stayed gone for just long enough to feel lonely and faint and sick and filthy before trudging home.
(and of course since then there have been all those other things… Bible college which introduced me to new ways to question God… watching amazing couples go barren… seeing death in old people and young people and younger children… wars and hate and all those things that could go on for pages and pages)
And I’m here. On my better days, I’m here.
And there are moments where my love isn’t closely followed by this shadow of fear… this whisper that speculates at what I’ll be asked to give up in the name of God, give up in the name of Love.
When Laurie’s song comes on my mental playlist and like a splinter secured by a thin layer of skin, won’t budge a fraction of a centimeter, and I’m hearing her voice Though you slay me I will trust you… though you slay me I am yours… I let her voice do the yearning for me. Because most days I’m not there yet. But choking on my words and bruised from the last time life kicked the wind out of me, I’m trying.
