009. Red is the Color
Dear friend,
There’s nothing like grief to turn you into a self-centered mess. I would use another word, but… it’s not a nice one and the Lord keeps reminding me that he doesn’t allow people to speak disparagingly of his kids, particularly not those so close to his heart as the broken-hearted. Why should I get special privileges? I am most unwilling to have the world seem to revolve around me, but I’m also sad because the world doesn’t. My emotions change so quickly that I’m exhausting my resources at a rapid pace.
For the bereaved there’s two sharp realities: the world doesn’t go on, but it does. There’s the sense that we’re outside of time now, while everyone else is still inside it. We’ve all lived 44 calendar days between February 6 and today, but as far as how the time felt to me, it’s been more like 5 months of time. As if people’s world does go on… until they see you and it gets disrupted. It gets old to keep disrupting other people’s worlds.
Or until you have to say no to yet one more thing because you don’t have the capacity to give time and resources like normal. I say no an awful lot.
”Would you like to take a walk?”
“Not tonight.”
Because you haven’t cried for two days and that’s too long, so instead of a walk sometimes you stay home and weep your eyes out.. Another time, you choke back the tears and take a stupid little walk for your stupid mental health. There’s constant tradeoff’s like that. Like, tonight should I make grief move by walking or crying? Should I eat well or give grace for frozen pizza? Both contribute to health, depending on whether your body or spirit or soul need the sustenance more. It’s like being utterly childlike in emotions, without parents to tell you what to do. It’s so difficult to make decisions for oneself.
Making grief move is a big thing. Someone told me about the need to keep emotions moving right after mom died and boy hey were they right. Grief tends to get stuck deep inside it if we don’t rattle it out somehow. Make grief move. Just a little, but don’t let it get stuck.
A friend told me recently to remember to let my soul breathe. I thought about that awhile. What does that mean for me? The truth is that mom died. That truth inside me looks very different than it does for my sisters, brothers, dad, or aunts, or for friends who also lost a mom. We all have unique inner landscapes and unique relationships, and this makes grief look different too. Some of us don’t want humor over this time, some do. Some want to talk, some don’t. Some need hard exercise, some need to take a break. One thing that doesn’t change from grief to grief is the way the devil likes to sneak in on the back of trauma. He does it in any trauma, but grief is a whole new ball park if you haven’t experienced it before. The devil will target your identity any chance he gets, and grief is no exception.
For example, Mom wasn’t a super nurturing person. She always worked to emotionally connect and made definite progress in that area, but it was hard for her. She wanted to be more nurturing, because that was what was in her heart, but it was easier for her to do instead of be.
Sometimes I feel the heaviness of what mom struggled with, because children generally do. Whether or not we are emotionally articulate, we know our parents. I find it natural to share in her struggle. In some ways, it’s my own struggle too, maybe because it was hers first. That’s relationship. It’s why relationships are so darn risky and so wonderful. We are meant to give and receive as humans, and so we share stuff and sometimes bear it. Boundaries are when we lay down things neither should be carrying. Except sometimes we have to carry things, and not even boundaries keep out death.
Mom’s death is a load I actually can’t carry alone. Like, can’t. This is a new one on me. I’ve always been independent, and suddenly I find myself unable to carry all the things. It pitches my world into a heaving, tipsy place that leaves me nauseous. For real nauseous, with achy joints and headaches and trouble sleeping. Imbalanced emotions. Fatigue and weariness to the bone. I wonder how I will get through every day, and some days, like the other night, I had to call in the cavalry to pray me through it.
“Bear one another’s burdens, for so we fulfill the law of Christ.”
I’m finding that our real needs, when we get around to having them in tough times, don’t leave us with many options. You receive, because it’s do or die. There’s not a lot of room to be picky when one gets desperate. I find the question of “should I be this needy” to be almost laughable right now. It still bothers me from time to time though. What does it mean to depend on God and depend on humans. What should it mean?
To the degree that I am able to answer the question of whether I’m worthy of love is to the degree that I accept help. It’s been fascinating to see the root of my question is not, “should I be this needy” but “am I worthy of being loved this much?”
I’m learning that there are needs that are meant to be filled by certain people in our lives, and absenting that care, we hurt badly. It leaves wounds, and many of those hurts turn off our receptors to love. It’s really simple, and agonizing. I am finally able to admit that daughters need nurturing from their mother. I didn’t get much of that even though mom loved me deeply and cared for me extremely well in other areas. I’m far ahead of many people in terms of knowing how to care for my health and brain. I’m behind on knowing how to be cared for in my heart.
It’s significant to me that God isn’t taking away my neediness. He doesn’t say, “oh hey, actually, I wrote the code for kids to be nurtured by their mom, but I changed my mind, you don’t need that anymore just because you didn’t get much of it.” He isn’t telling me to move on from the grieving. He gave me a mom. That means the world to me. I feel so lucky to have gotten exactly the mother I did. She took the challenges life threw at her and she overcame far more than I have. Besides that, she gave me life. Literally. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for mom. That’s an enormous loss. The world, for a time, is lost to me because I have lost my mom.
I’m grieving because I will always need my mom, and I don’t have her anymore. A different sort of grief is the one where I grieve that we weren’t as emotionally connected as either of us wanted. That’s the most complicated form of grief, because where we feel that love got pulled away from us or denied, is where the why questions kick in. Why did it happen? Why does this hurt so much? What were the factors that went wrong? It’s not bad to discern those things, but where it’s sneaky is the lie that I lost my mom because I had my chance and blew it. I could’ve gone home for the holidays last year. I could’ve called her more. I could’ve written. Regrets, guilt, shame. I’m a bad daughter. A bad, bad daughter.
Feeling bad about myself shuts me down. Literally. I’ve wrestled with this because there seems to be a view of fundamental Christianity that is predicated on feeling bad. What a depraved, wretched sinner I am, sort of thing. I’ve come to see this as a valuable realization, because if I did not know my depravity (need) I would never turn toward Christ, but I have also found it a devastating position to take in Christian identity. I cannot sustain depravity and listen to the voice of God at the same time. For me it has proved impossible.
Unless I am who I am because of love, and not depravity, I cannot be a Christian. Depravity will always be part of my story, but in my grief and need, I must not stay there or I shall not be able to serve God. Love, is the power upon which I run, not sin. Somehow I must make the switch from badness to goodness — a coheir with Jesus Christ and of the lineage of God.
It’s weird how subtle, but how massive a distinction it is to be counted worthy, and to live from that place instead of the worthless one where everything is constantly under danger of being stolen, killed, and destroyed. It’s weird how we have to build our treasure in heavenly places, where nothing can be stolen or corrupted.
I don’t listen to God very well, I’m discovering. He has some incredible things to say about my identity, and even goes to great lengths to explain the old man vs. the new man. I know it takes time to process the new man, because that’s why we’re told to renew our minds in Christ, but honestly, we stay stuck in being powerless because it’s under our jurisdiction. If we fail, because we will, we just activate the blame game on sin, and bam, there’s no need for the power of God. We’re deceived if we’re still hanging on to the old man. He is under the devil’s thumb, and so are we if we stay in him.
Grief is teaching me that I have to confront my own badness and decide whether or not God tells the truth or not about what he does with sin. Whether or not I am a beloved daughter, and worthy of good gifts. It’s been hard for me to believe that, because I’ve gotten handed lots of shit over the past five months. Fear sells me an “where will it end?” narrative and God keeps saying kind and wonderful things about my inheritance. “Trust me,” he says. “You have no idea what I have for you,” and I reply, “that’s what scares me.”
For a time, I must drink the bitter cup. For a time I must know the wrath of God. For a time, I am forsaken, rejected, and abandoned, but to the degree that I heal is the degree of how much I listen to the voice of the Father. People don’t fully realize that grieving is this extensive until they go through it. I didn’t. I didn’t know that I was going to get slammed with bitterness and wrath inside my heart. Veterans at grief nod and say “I went through this too.”
I have been watching the TV show “Bones” which has been helping me grieve. I’m not as hyper-rational as Dr. Brennan, but nevertheless there are similarities in our process of reasoning. She too, didn’t know she had a heart. Where she turned to hard science for explanation, I had turned to soft sciences like psychology. I’ve been learning to lay that aside in the past few years, because I see that I needed to find my heart, not figure it out. We get those two messed up all the time.
In one episode Booth, Brennan’s partner, challenges her on her use of the term “heart broken.” He says that according to her rationale you can’t break a heart because it’s a muscle. Brennan, who has by this time learned to know about 5% of her heart, thinks and replies that then it is crushing, not breaking. Sometimes we are heart-crushed. I am. I tell God that he must heal me. There are no other options left, because I feel really hurt by God, even betrayed. I trusted him, and this is where he led me? Into pain and hard circumstances so comprehensive that almost no corner of my life is left pain-free. I am consumed. I am overcome. “Your waves and your breakers go over me.”
My temptation is to try to rationalize and justify God, like Job’s friends did. I want to say, “but look at all the good this will do me! Look at how good God is, and how right, and how just. Look at how I have grown!” But when I am actually honest and not just trying to take over God’s work, my cheery assertions about the goodness of God turn into violent weeping and anger.
I am not going to do it. I am not going to justify the goodness of God. What errant nonsense that is for humans to attempt. No wonder God had to spend chapters and chapters telling Job just how nonsensical and silly that is. We do not justify the goodness of God.
He simply IS good. I asked him recently what he does when he is angry. He said that he’s been known to kill thousands of people. I replied that I don’t know what to do with this side of him, and he said it is not a side. He is the I am. All things are one in him, and he is all in all. I cannot understand this mystery, how is it possible for a holy God to be angry?
Down through the pain and wrath I must go. Trusting, trusting, trusting. Yet he slays me. David the Poet talks often about going down to the place of death. Sheol.
I have decided to follow Jesus. Down through the pain and wrath I must go, I take up my cross and follow. I used to think Christians get the protected shortcut around God’s wrath, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. I do know this, if it weren’t for Jesus, I would be destroyed in this place. He is my rod and staff, and he comforts me. I sit at his table amidst weeping and gnashing of teeth all around me.
I have a hard, hard call for myself and you, but it is also one of ineffable beauty. We are not being delivered from pain and suffering. We are being set free.
We dodge pain like nobody’s business, using sermons and podcasts and articles and psychologists and therapists and counselling and knowledge and calling and jobs and ministry and gender roles and marriage and church to avoid pain. When no one can deliver us from pain we assume that they are doing it wrong or that we are with the wrong person. We need the “real church of God up in here” we cry but we are the real church people. Not even God delivers us from pain and hardship.
Yet pain is not our inheritance. We are co-heirs with Jesus, and he is going to take care of our needs. I don’t know how. He isn’t going to bring my mom back to earth. So, this is a mystery to me. But I am strangely comforted to know that suffering is not a shame. I am not a shame to the kingdom of God. I am following Jesus.
As I walk, every corner of my faith is saturated in colors that are too much. Black is more truly black than anything I’ve encountered before, red and yellow overwhelm me, and green is too brilliant for my eyes to see. Scale is all disrupted too. Things that are near seem far away, and things that are far away seem near. A long leap doesn’t hurt me and a short one is agony. Small things are the big in this universe, as small as realizing this morning that I cannot send mom a picture of the rhubarb pie a friend brought me and tell her I’d like to bring some rhubarb home when I come to visit. The plant is still there, but she isn’t. I can still get the rhubarb, but the bare idea zaps me. There are lasers everywhere, like an action film where the destination is across a room of red wires that will slice off a body part.
Those red wires keep slicing off bits of my remaining heart.
I got thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire with mom’s death. Red, hot flames lick at me.
When my friend said to let my soul breathe I decided that to act upon this advice was to do something to feel pretty again. I’m a woman, that’s important to me. I need to feel pretty. Grief takes that away from you for a time. My health has suffered and with it, so has any beauty. While my world is saturated in color, I am not, being more pale and washed out like a water color. So I went to the salon and got a pedicure (that a kind friend actually gifted me with way back before the accident) and finally I closed that book because I had been on my way to get a pedicure when the accident happened and hadn’t dared to go since then. I chose a Thai Chili Red color which my roomie says looks like Legally Blonde, but whatever. Those women knew how to feel pretty. Now my inside and outside, and the world, is matching red. I am red. Red with the blood which has washed me clean. Red with fire. Red with anger. Red with beauty. Red in hell. Red in love.
I wait on the salvation of the Lord. He has promised me the strength of the eagles. He says his banner of me is love. He doesn’t abandon me when I beat on his chest within the circle of his arms and he bottles my tears. He says that my identity is a faithful daughter, and audacities of audacities, I dare to believe that he is building my hope. I have set my table amidst anger and bitterness and know, these enemies will be vanquished when they have finished their service to God, and me.
God’s purposes will not be thwarted.
I said that God doesn’t deliver us from pain. He doesn’t, but he does promise resurrection into new life which is infinitely better. I shall yet see the goodness of God in the land of the living, not just in the land of the dead. Let this be as a witness unto you, because you have seen my death, so also shall you see my life. Follow me as I follow Christ.
L. Raine
Photo by Andrey Zvyagintsev
