the painful part of belief.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: 
It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

- C.S. Lewis

I've been riding a spiritual roller coaster for what feels like forever now: one moment so happy and grateful and content, the next torn apart, hurt, and in tears, crying desperately for the Abba, Father I thought I knew and loved so well.

And that day, now nearly two weeks ago, when my mother called me frantic and scared, my heart stopped.

I looked at the sky, and I cursed. 

And as I drove to the sight of the accident, I yelled at this loving, creative God who claims to know me and to want to be known by me.

I asked Him, shaking and tearful, just what He was doing up there, just what He thought He was doing to my family, to the ones I love. I wanted to know just who He thought He was, up there so very far from me. 

He let me, by the way. 

Let me cry and scream and curse and pound my steering wheel. 

I'm not saying I'd recommend it. Anger isn't pleasant, and it isn't pretty. 

I don't intend to make a habit of it.

But my mother — who, it should be noted, is fine now — was hurting and alone and upset, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to know where He had been when another car struck hers, where He was when my dad couldn't answer his phone. I wanted to know why it felt like Satan had taken up residence in our homes this summer, coming at us in quiet moments in dark corners.

And He answered. Gently and quietly, after tears were shed and the realization that my mother was, indeed, fine hit me like a punch in the stomach. After apologies were made, and I sat down and let God know I really wasn't angry, just hurt and confused and in desperate need of Him, He told me, like I already knew: I AM.

He was there that day, that moment, that instant when metal hit metal. He was there in my mother's tears and my own angry lamentations.

He was there, too, last week, as I sat in the doctor's chair and prayed fervently for my fears and burdens to be cast aside. I prayed hard for His presence to be felt. Because some days, I simply must feel it. I must not just know it; I must touch it.

The God we serve allows us those moments, I think, to remind us of our weakness, of our absolute dependence on Him for everything we have ever known or never will know.

My little life hasn't experienced a terrible amount of pain. There have been sad and scary moments, to be sure. Anxious, tearful calls from my mother and sobs in a pillow after a grandparent's death. Hurt feelings and broken relationships. Health scares and unkind words.

And some days, it is all just too much to bear, this pain that rocks us and shakes us.

In these last days, pain, for me, has turned into answered prayers, so I am hesitant to say it, but I wonder: Is that the point?

The cancer and the death and the accidents and the anger and the hurt and the divorce and the separation and the division.

Maybe it is all meant to remind us how weak and fallible we are. How alone we would really be if it were not for Him.

I am not sitting here, on the other side of some rather painful moments, trying to provide solid answers to the deep theological mysteries that will never go away.

But I do wonder if C.S. Lewis was right.

If in our hurried lives, pain reminds us, shouts at us, to stop. If the pain occurs because it is the only thing that can awaken us from our apathetic slumber.

Maybe it is the only thing that arouses us to our utter, desperate need for Him.

{photo by David Crandall}