Who knew that I would experience my own personal derecho last week? You know- that mysterious term used for a land hurricane that destroyed the corn crops in Iowa and Illinois this past summer, with high wind gusts that pulled up trees by their roots, flipped cars, flattened crop fields and destroyed silos, homes, and farms? This land hurricane event went unnoticed by many, but was devastating to the area and especially to the farmers. Well, I don't pretend to be a farmer or to have a green thumb, but the landscape of my soul felt like it had been razed to the ground after a series of blows to my own personal sense of propriety and desires for others were dashed.
In the span of about 6 hours I experienced two women I love telling me that they were going to commit suicide, and a dear family member communicating severe internal angst and a deep lack of self-worth. The brokenness was raw and real. I had just seen one of these women a few days prior, visiting her at her home where she is confined to bed wracked with pain most of the time, and has been for the past several years. No doctor can help her, there is not a lot of money left from all of the failed treatments, and she and her husband live from one day to the next just hoping that she can eat, sleep and go to the bathroom. It is pretty basic. We have prayed together many times, and there has been lots of emotional and spiritual healing from the past.
While next to her bed on this morning and before opening up Scripture to pray I had told God, "Lord, I come to you in my complete poverty. I am here with empty hands. I can do nothing without you. I am helpless. I don't know what you want or what you are seeking here, but I know you tell us that all things work together for the good of those who love God." Her exhaustion and the fatigue of family members and care givers were foremost on my mind in this deep pit of desolation and suffering that seemed neverending. It was palpable. As I left I wondered if I had any belief in what I was praying and reciting. I couldn't help but think of Jesus lamenting, "When the Son of Man comes, will He find any faith on earth?" [Luke 18:8] And, like the father whose son had been oppressed for years by an evil spirit that even his closest disciples could not cast out, Jesus had told him, "If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes." The father's response - "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief" [Mk9:24]. My insides were churning as my self-dialogue painfully asked myself, "I am living a sacramental life. Do I believe what I am living out every day and praying? Am I truly who I say that I am? Do I fully believe that Jesus can do this? Why does it seem that Jesus doesn't want to heal her or take her to Himself but instead keep her here in complete continued misery for years on end. How many rosaries, Lord? How many novenas? How many prayers of healing and hoops to jump through?"
So fast forward two days and the perfect storm is on the horizon, and getting ready to hit. I am feeling ineffectual, and immersed in doubt and wallowing in subtle and not so subtle forms of pride. I am even hearing the guttural whisper of the Enemy telling me that I should stop praying because every time I do the situation gets worse. What am I doing wrong? Why does God not help this person? How long, Lord? I was caught in a hamster wheel of intense empathic pain for my sister in Christ and selfish concern for my own role in healing her, instead of trusting in the movement and timing of the Holy Spirit and God's ways. In the midst Derecho Candida, the threats of suicide begin to roll in via text. I respond with messages of hope, love, and encouragement, but feel completely empty, devoid of answers, doubting God and his plans. It is the perennial problem of suffering that C.S. Lewis wrote about in his classic work on pain. He tells us, "The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love', and look on things as if man were the centre of them." He calls pain and suffering God's megaphone to a deaf and fallen world. He further tells us that if we "try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order or nature and the existence of free will involve, you find that you have excluded life itself."
How appropriate that this interior crisis was still front and center on the Feast Days of the Exaltation of the Cross as well as the Sorrows of Mary. The solemn celebrations that show us that the ultimate suffering - death itself- does not have the last word. That Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb for all changes all that is lost and makes it beautiful. That the victim becomes the victor in Christ Jesus. On this day I wrote the following stream of conscience poem/rant/lamentation:
That splintered heavy beam
That you carried on your torn
Shoulder and back for me.
Intersection of mercy and truth
Justice and peace is sometimes
An unwieldy peace agreement indeed
Between my weak pock-marked soul
And your magnanimous pure self.
This crossbeam of love leaves an
Imprint, a seal upon my arm,
A branding on the chambers of my
Heart. Sometimes my heart can no longer
Beat to the rhythm of your heart
That is opened and immersed in the Cross.
Instead, it wishes to efface it from myself
And all of humanity.
Your words sting as you speak eternal truth,
"Get behind me Satan."
Ahhh....to eschew the Cross.
To reject it and forsake it.
To deeply misunderstand and
To mistrust it.
To run from it as from a dreaded category 5 Storm
To deny it, and keep its kiss of love
From engraving its eternal wisdom,
Its fiery heat of truth from
Capturing and branding me
with my true identity.
What a web of self deception I weave,
What a broken and lost path I follow
When I wander from the luminescence
of the Cross.
Its crossbeams stretch in all four directions-
Whether I go north, south, east or west
It will find me. He will find me. You will
Find me, Jesus, because you never leave me.
As a fulcrum of love and mercy you
Lift me to yourself, where mercy and
Truth meet and justice and peace kiss.
I still try to argue, I still wonder why.
Why the pain, Lord?
Why the continued, seemingly never-ending
Suffering for some people, despite the prayers,
The effort?
This is where I meet the problem of pain & suffering.
Sometimes it seems downright scandalous, Lord.
How long?
Why?
When will relief come?
Where's the mercy, the justice,
The truth, the peace?
"It is right there", you tell me.
Really?
Am I blind? Deaf? Dumb?
Very possibly, yes.
Because I do know that your ways
Are not my ways and I am not
Your counselor.
Forgive me, Lord, for counseling you.
Forgive me, Lord, for doubting you.
Forgive me, Lord, for being angry with you.
Forgive me, Lord, for running from your Cross.
Forgive me, Lord, for questioning and advising you.
Forgive me, Lord, for failing to do and say what you desire of me.
Forgive me, Lord, for my lack of faith.
Forgive me, Lord, for my lack of hope.
Forgive me, Lord, for my lack of charity.
Only you can deliver me
With your crossbeam that glitters resurrection
With your cautery of love that burns and brands,
In order to heal.
Forgive me, Lord, for I am a sinful woman.
I place my trust in you and
Surrender to you.
All that I have I place in the Immaculate
hands, heart and womb of Our Lady to
Purify and present to you.
Please help me to not be scandalized
By the Cross. May you instead
Lift me up, that in my complete poverty
I may be glorified with you. Amen.
Just like you have taught me to consent to whatever the day brings and its circumstances for myself, your gentle voice these past few days has reminded me that I must consent to what you are doing in other people's lives and the plans that you have for them. I cannot control, but I can love, pray and be present and available in the midst of profound suffering. I can imitate Our Lady who stood silently at the Cross, offering her tears and her torn heart, and surrender to your ways that are not our ways. May I consent to your plans for me as well as your plans for others, Lord. Then I can be content and this sadness and doubt can be banished from my heart. Then the wheat that falls to the ground and dies can become fruitful, and this interior derecho can be a source of rebirth, renewed faith and hope in your loving providence and perfectly laid plans for myself and all others.
