Lord, If.

Lately, it seems that everywhere I look, devastation surrounds me. I can pinpoint several exact moments in the past year that my world has been flipped upside down, leaving me devastated, trying to figure out how to make sense of things. It only seems like each time I get closer to wholeness and to joy, my world comes crumbling down again. Once I get the energy, the courage, to jump in the ring again, it seems like I am just met with more devastation and disappointment.

And amidst the devastation, all that I have to offer is tears and ashes, ashes and tears. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In her book, Daring Greatly, Brene brown writes and speaks about the arena in which we show up to the experiences, people, and situations in our lives that may or may not end in ashes, in loss, hurt, or devastation. We live in this arena often whether we choose to be or not when we find ourselves amidst exposure, uncertainty, or risk of some kind.

Showing up to the arena looks a variety of ways:
Showing up looks like a difficult conversation providing feedback to an employee.
Showing up looks like being on the receiving end of feedback.
Showing up to the arena looks like maintaining integrity to your beliefs even if it means a door will close.
Showing up to the arena looks like shopping for a headstone for your deceased spouse. Showing up to the arena looks like coming to work after burnout and frustration.
Showing up to the arena looks like an unexpected phone call with an abusive parent after a year of no communication.
Showing up can also mean saying "I love you " or "I am ready to get help" or "We can do better."

We show up to the arena on multiple occasions every day. One thing I've come to realize is that when you are in grief, you live in this arena nearly 24/7. You dwell in that arena.The grief that put you there most of the time threw you in with no warning. And when you stand there and cannot get out, you live in a place that is fairly unhealthy, almost dangerous to your truest self, the one that needs grace and time to be healed.

A recent discovery led me to believe that on approximately July 8, 2018 I was placed in the arena and have been there since. Since my dad died, grief has formed almost every experience that I’ve had, whether I’ve been aware of it or not and it hasn’t always been in healing and tender ways. I started two new jobs with the hope of a new beginning. I started one job being fairly transparent to begin with but now I wish I never had. The transparency with which I shared my story, about the season I had been in for the past few years and the recent loss of my dad, was not met with transparency. It was as if I had put myself out there, only to feel like now, people looked on me with pity. I didn’t learn about others’stories nor did it feel like authenticity was the culture that I had stepped into. It felt like I was living in the arena alone and exposed. On top of that feeling, I felt like I neither had the space nor the freedom to seek healing and empathy. It was almost a constant battle of figuring out how to provide my own healing, if I couldn’t find it from others.

The point in time that grief became a character in my story was also a time in my life that shame was rampant. I had shame wrapped tightly around my experience of seminary, wrapped around my understanding of who I was, and wound up in my search for a job and career that intersects my vocational dreams, but that intersection was not my reality.Grief came and mingled with shame in a way that my already sense of “not enough-ness” blended with a sense of deep sorrow and forsakenness. I started to believe that if God didn’t have anything great in store for me before my dad’s death, God certainly didn’t care about me after. I mean, I thought I was entitled to some sort of miracle like you see in movies and read in books, but instead it just felt like more pain and more disappointing circumstances.

If I’ve learned one thing in the last seven months its this: shame + grief is not a good thing.

I realize this is not super helpful to someone reading looking for a “however.” I often seek every resource, book, article or blog to help me find it. What is the loophole that can get out of the arena, and out of this season of shame and grief?

I don’t think there is one.

The loophole, the answer, the exception, the hope, I believe is staying in the arena. I believe the antidote is showing up amidst the struggle. I often find myself telling the college ladies that I oversee to “embrace the suck”.  And while you are at it, be honest with Jesus.

I’ve been reading the book of John and I’ve discovered a sisterhood with Mary and Martha. In the story where Jesus raises Lazarus back to life, it is in the in between moments, the moments between death and new life that I too closely resonate with the words of both of the sisters. Their brother had just died and they knew that Jesus had the authority and power to save him. They were devastated. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” As if Jesus is not already mourning the death of his good friend, he is reminded twice that had he been present, Lazarus would still be alive. But the sheer weight of those words spoken by two women that also were beloved to Jesus has resonated with me as I mourn not only Jesus’ seemingly lack of intervention in my own dad’s untimely death, but his lack of intervention in my life. Mary and Martha, I imagine, speak with both deep sorrow and perhaps a little bit of anger. They stand in the arena with the emotional risk of tragedy sitting on their shoulders.  I mean, Jesus had been performing miracles and had all authority on heaven and earth, but wasn’t there to save their brother, the one whom Jesus loved? I imagine they wondered, “How could you step away at a time like this, Lord? We could’ve used your intervention.”

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

I have found myself in a similar state, devastated by ashes and loss around me. Saying to God, “Where the heck are you? I could really use a miracle right now.” I tend to fill in Mary and Martha’s words with my own:

“Lord, if you had been here, my dad would not have died.”

“Lord, if you had been here, seminary would’ve been a better experience for me.”

“Lord, if you had been here, I wouldn’t have been rejected from so many jobs.”

“Lord, if you had been here, I wouldn’t have relied on other people to help me heal.”

“Lord, if you had been here, my job would be more fulfilling.”

“Lord, if you had been here, I would have been seen and understood.”

“Lord, if you had been here, there wouldn’t be so much disappointment and pain.”

“Lord, if you had been here, my life would look so much different.”

You fill in the blank with your “Lord, if…”

This short phrase has opened me up to a better understanding of Mary, Martha and my own devastation. Perhaps they felt forsaken by Jesus. Perhaps they felt Jesus had turned a blind eye on not only their lives but their brothers as well. If Jesus had been there, something would have or would not have happened. They are filled with the essence of “Come, Lord Jesus. Lord, have Mercy.” These words are loaded with a depth and a structure in which we can also approach Jesus in the spaces where we too, feel forsaken. They echo the psalmist who cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Words spoken by our Savior, himself. They acknowledge that we are somewhere in the arena, dwelling amidst uncertainty, risk and perhaps a bit of fear.

Those words are honest and filled with vulnerability. And we find in the Scriptures that those words are met with deep empathy as Jesus comes and sees the lifeless Lazarus, the very loss that has devastated both Mary and Martha. Jesus doesn’t say back to Mary and Martha, “You emotional people! Don’t you see that I am going to raise him up? If I had been here then maybe Lazarus wouldn’t have died, but I wasn’t there, so suck it up. Death happens, get used to it!”  Nope. He doesn’t say that. That would be absurd! Instead, he weeps. He enters the arena. He enters the very space we feel exposed and forsaken and weeps over those spaces.

I think that grief changes us. It both opens us to emotional risk and exposure and opens us up to honest dialogue with the Lord, if we decide to go there. If we decide to stay in the arena amidst the pain and the struggle.

I don’t know about you, but grief has changed my ability to worship. I can show up to worship on Sundays and force the words, “Oh praise the name of the Lord our God” out of my lips, but with my heart I wonder if I truly mean them. I just want to yell at the top of my lungs, “WHERE ARE YOU LORD?”  

I don’t think there is anything wrong with naming the ways we feel disappointed in how Jesus has or hasn’t shown up in our lives. As we cry out for more of Jesus, for Jesus to have his way with our lives, to grant us life and dismantle the death and darkness, I think we can be assured that they are truly met with empathy.

I think we can be assured

that no matter what we have to offer, the smoke coming off of the ashes of our broken praise still rises before the throne. Jesus is not sitting at the right hand of God rolling his eyes, but most likely weeping as he holds our tears and our prayers tenderly in his hands.

**Thank you, Brené Brown for creating language and understanding around what it means to show up, to be vulnerable, and to seek courage amidst it all.

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. New York, NY: Gotham Books, 2012. Print.