So many times during my life in christendom I heard story after story about how "God was silent" in the pain and the hurt and the suffering. I heard the anger and bitterness behind those moments of silence. But in the last few years, my God has been silent, and for that, I'll be forever thankful. No grand displays of splendor and omniscience, just the tide of life ebbing and flowing-- waxing, waning, constant and always changing. As if He knew that a whisper would send me over the proverbial edge, past the point of no return. As if, in building and forming my soul He memorized each of the kill-switches in their exact order, and once a particular chain of events was set off that landed me here instead of there, He knew.
Silence.
No sudden movements.
Everything else is moving, everyone else screaming, shouting. But from Him, no noise. No words.
Don't.
Spook.
Her.
I struggle every day to scratch and claw my way out of the dark depression that is my reality. It is very rare for me to wake up and have a good day, to be able to get out of bed without fighting a dozen battles before my feet even touch the hard wood floors. And this morning, I woke up happy. I woke excited. My whole house was quiet, the kids still asleep, Todd blissfully snoring, and I was looking forward to a moment. Life in christendom (think Stepford Wives here folks, christendom as the place you move into where everything has a specific way it should and shouldn't be) is prescribed. For a thousand reasons that I mostly understand and generally feel can be helpful and beneficial, they are prescribed. But just as quoting to someone who has just lost a baby Jeremiah 29:11 isn't helpful, might even be harmful; sometimes, those "prescribed" advanced directives aren't always helpful, might even be harmful. And today, as I woke early, grabbed my Bible and my new women's Bible study book to sit and do my "devotional time with Jesus" that's "highly recommended" and part of a "spiritually disciplined life" my joy, my happiness, my fleeting moment of feeling like ME evaporated like a puff of smoke in the coastal breezes. It all felt so cheap, so sterilized, so out of the big, messy context that is my reality, my life.
I'm trying, ever so hard to get my stuff together. To do the things I'm supposed to do. My therapist and I made a check list.
1. Feed children when they're hungry
2. Clean underwear for the family
3. Make friends
4. Do normal things- go to the park, make coffee dates, hang a picture, plant something, etc
I've worked through my check list. My kids are always fed, I do the laundry, I've gone through the agonizing process of making friends, not just acquaintances but good friends. I go to the park every day during the school year and most days during the summer. I go out. I decorate my house. I've even planted shit. But my life isn't any more put together right now than it was the moment I stepped on that plane to leave my country and my people and myself. My life LOOKS fine, but it's not. My Bible study LOOKS fine-- every blank is filled in, all the answers and thoughtful questions dutifully written down, but it's not fine. Because I'm still in that argument. I'm still standing on the brink of no return. I'm still in a yelling match between myself and my faith family, with Jesus caught in the middle. My faith is too simple, too basic for most of mainstream evangelical christendom.
I love Jesus because He loved me first.
That's.
It.
And no one else seems to get that. No one else seems to understand, and in that lack of understanding, harm is being done. Except the One who created me, the one who knows I need to speak first, I need to ask the questions, I need to make the first move. Don't distract from the task at hand. The battle against the Powers and Principalities is vicious and brutal, and sometimes, looks an awful lot like a staring contest. And He knows me, He knows that, and He's staying quiet... and that gives me permission to stay quiet; stay quiet and fight with everything in me to no look away first, not blink, not give in to the bitterness and anger and rage that would be able to consume me, heart and marrow.
He gave everything for me, including the right to speak first.
And He sits quietly, not moving, not speaking, letting me BE in the midst of my battle. So I can focus and fight, not being distracted because He knows and I know that if left to the two of us, He and I will win. So I quiet the anger at the simplistic and categorical Bible study that reduces the God of the universe to a simple one-liner. I linger in the silence of the song that says I'm a "friend of God" when I don't want a friend, I want a thousand things, but friend is not one of them. He sits, quietly, and lets me be quiet... because He knows the plans He has for me... and He will work all things to His good, according to His will, and right now, that means Brittany gets to chose when it's time to speak, and He'll stay silent until the time is ready.
