Bad news

Since my baby sister Heidi was diagnosed with cancer last December, I’ve had probably five occasions that I would describe as nights of utter despair. Sure, I’ve been sad before in life–even crushed–but nothing like this handful of times that have sent me to my knees–literally–with sobs that felt like they would tear my bones apart. The trigger, each time, has been bad news. The chemo didn’t work. The second chemo doesn’t look like it’s working. Heidi’s kidneys stopped functioning. Each time, these blows have knocked me down into a pit of darkness.

I’m talking about the kind of sorrow that’s so heavy, and so black, that I’d rather die in that moment than keep feeling it. It’s the hopelessness and anger that drove me to punch the garage. The fire in my spirit that felt like it would consume me alive if I didn’t start running, and keep running, maybe forever. In these moments, I wept and shouted and said things to God like, you don’t even care! My sister is one of yours! Is this how you treat the ones who love you? Is this how you treat one of your most faithful servants? No loving Father would do this. How dare you. Badly done.

Collapsing faith

These are the moments that I described in this post as standing on the edge of my faith, looking into a chasm. A chasm where God doesn’t exist–or exists but isn’t good–or doesn’t care. Where life is sad and there is no justice, and no comfort, just death waiting for us all. Where it’s not just about Heidi dying, but about refugee babies dying in the ocean as their families tried to swim to Greece. About school shootings claiming the life of children whose moms and dads sent them to school hours earlier with a swift kiss and a casual “see you soon.” It’s about the pain and the injustice of the human experience, which overwhelms the world and crashes over my soul in those moments like a tidal wave. Nothing survives that. It leaves you bare, and empty, and alone.

At one point I remember looking into my husband’s eyes and saying, “I don’t know if I can believe in God anymore.”

And yet.

Somehow my faith has not only held but grown. Somehow I’ve woken up the next morning, and the next, and the next, and I have not fallen into the chasm of a meaningless world in which God is cruel and death wins.

Re-reading this post to make sure it makes sense, I’ve just noticed the disconnect. In one sentence, I’m about to lose my faith. The next sentence, it’s growing. One sentence, a tidal wave sweeps me bare. The next moment, my faith is still there. What?

Held

Exactly. What happened between the despair and the “and yet?” I can only say–God. I wasn’t holding on. He was. I wasn’t building my faith. He was gifting it to me. On those nights of darkness, I let go. But he did not.

And somehow–not in spite of those dark moments but because of them–something so incredibly sweet has begun to seep into my spirit. Something deep and rich and so terribly wonderful that I never want to lose the taste from my mouth.

It’s so sweet that I’ve delayed in writing about it because I don’t ever think words could do it justice. So bear with me as I fumble through.

If you’re a Christian, or have been exposed to Christians, you’ve surely heard the phrase “the good news.” I’d say it’s traditionally recapped as “Jesus came and died for your sins so you can go to heaven after you die.” And yes, that’s good news.

But somehow, as I felt myself drowning in the ocean of sorrow, that little definition grew. And grew.

The deepest cries

From the ocean of sorrow, out of my mouth, came the cries of the human heart. The vocalization of my deepest fears. My nightmares. The cries that I imagine are common to many of us.

Is there beauty? Is there meaning? Will all the pain be worth it?

I don’t believe that God has brought the cancer on Heidi. Or even that this is his “will” for her. I believe that sickness and death are a product of human evil and a broken world. But God’s promise to his people is that he will bring good and redemption. That swords will be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. I love that image because the violent tool becomes the tool of good work. God doesn’t bring about the pain in my life. But in his mercy and goodness, he takes the strands of it and weaves them into something beautiful. Meaningful.

I am convinced he will not let a single painful experience go to waste. That at the end of time, my life, and your life, and human history, will be woven into a breathtaking tapestry that tells the story we always wanted to be true. With the ending that our hearts always hungered for. Without God’s weaving fingers, human existence is a chaos of painful threads. But he will not let that lie. He will use it all.

To my heart’s deepest cries for beauty and meaning, God says yes. Beauty and meaning are not intrinsic to pain–quite the opposite. Pain and death seek to blot it out, and to rule, and to drown you. But God relentlessly weaves the beauty and the meaning in, stitch by stitch.

This is good news.

The other clamor of my heart in pain goes something like this: Is God listening? Does God speak to me? Would God change his mind, just because I ask?

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the story of God and Moses. Essentially, God is like, “Moses, you guys go ahead to the promised land, but go without me.” Moses argues him down and God changes his mind (check it out in Exodus). I’ve encountered lots of people who are very uncomfortable with this idea and try to explain it away. Well, God can’t really change his mind, can he . . .?

Which is funny, because not only does the passage say explicitly that he changes his mind (also translated as “relents” or even “repents”), but why is this idea disturbing? I find it deeply comforting.

One of my biggest fears is that I’ll beg and beg and beg about the things I care about most, but that nothing I can say will matter to him. That God is actually an immutable cliff, and I’m a little wave dashing itself to pieces against the rock.

Don’t get me wrong–he will accomplish his purpose. Which is sovereign, and perfect. But his purpose, it turns out, is to welcome a massive family of people into his kingdom and then live with us forever. And the way he does that is to draw near to us and be in a relationship. And it’s not a relationship if it’s one-sided.

God says, yes.

God changes his mind. Not his character–but his mind. Because we ask. This is good news. God is not an immutable cliff. He is a king . . . but more than that, he’s a father. A brother. A friend. He loves us. He listens, and answers. He won’t always do what I ask. But he might. And to me, that is essential.

We don’t even have to ask in the right way. Or with the right words. Or with the right feelings. In fact, there is no requirement. (Check out Gideon’s story for more on this)

The answers

Chris Tomlin’s song Is He Worthy has been one of my two go-to songs during this time. I weep every time I hear it. Here’s a taste of the lyrics:

This call and response, to me, mirrors my experience with despair, when the good news rises up like the sun in the morning and answers that despair with light. When I wake up and realize that my worst nightmares are just that–bad dreams. And that the reality is sweet, and good, and beautiful after all.

I’m glad for each hour I’ve spent in this dark place. Because it’s forced out the most important questions. And as the questions exploded out of my fury and helplessness, I was given in return answers so beautiful as to take my breath away.

Let me take a step back. Because not all of you are going through what I am. But we all go through something. If not now, later. Let’s be real–we’re all going to die. So.

What would be the best news, to you? And I don’t mean getting a nice little bonus at work, though we all want that–I’m talking about the profound best news. Would it be that you’d get to see all your loved ones again? That you’ll get to look into the eyes of the one you lost, again, and feel the warm clutch of their arms? That you’ll meet the baby you miscarried, and hold them to your chest, and hear their precious sighs? That you’ll never have to fear for your safety again? That you will one day be free of the profound trauma of abuse, or rape, or injustice?

God’s good news says yes

All your dearest dreams, and your deepest desires, you will get.

The good news is not just about Christ dying, though that is wonderful. It’s that God will one day pour us wine at a magnificent dinner table where the ones we love will be laughing. Death, gun violence, school shootings, injustice–that will be no more. Every hurt will be healed. Every broken body will be whole. Every mind will be sound. Every longing will be satisfied. And, I’m convinced, every shred of pain we have gone through, God will imbue with meaning and loveliness, so much of it that we will rise up and say, it was worth it. We’d do it again. He has not only redeemed it but, out of it, created an abundance beyond anything we could have imagined.

Things will be better because of the pain we endured. The fruit of it will somehow be more beautiful than a pain-free existence. I don’t know how that will work–but I know it will come true.

This is the good news I believe in. It’s wider and richer than the Sunday school answer. And when the strands of its music play inside me, every fiber of my being thrills and my souls shouts back YES.

Christian or no, liberal or conservative, I dare you to open your heart to it.