'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" by Natalie Murphy [Retrieve Lament 2021]
Today’s guest tells a story that intersects deeply with my own grief in the past two years but from depths of suffering, I’ll never fully realize. In the story of lament my dear friend and daughter, Natalie Murphy, invites us to bear witness to relentless courage and God’s relentless, if sometimes inaudible, love. Natalie’s always demonstrated fierce love for others and now, somehow in the wilderness ground of mental illness, that love is growing fiercer, truer, and sturdier. I’m astounded and honored to be able to watch this resurrection power animating my daughter to look more like Jesus and more like the Natalie God’s always imagined. May that same power animate all of us.
Would you read Natalie’s lament story with me, and ask God for an open heart to hear any words Christ might be speaking to you?
St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea, Bridgeport, CT- Summer 2019
“From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
by Natalie Murphy
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
It was the loudest quiet I had ever heard. Most people here had roommates, but I got lucky- the woman who was supposed to sleep next to me had attacked a nurse and was sent to the third floor. “You’re lucky you’re not on the third floor,” I was told by the other patients.
In my room on the second floor, the lights never fully went out, the beds felt like they were made of cinder blocks, the discomfort of the paper-thin blankets was second only to the towels. And it was quiet. So, so quiet. The voices in my head were thunder. Fear, panic, sadness, confusion- they were all there. All but His.
Why couldn’t I hear him? Where had he gone? I wanted a booming, bellowing voice to drown out the noise in my head, but I would’ve settled for a whisper or anything at all.
My God, My God.
Not just any old God, but my God. They had a history, he and David. We had a history. This wasn’t the first time I cried out to him, but it was the first time I heard nothing in return. I cried all night. I found a golf pencil and scribbled “God, God, God” on my intake paperwork. Could he not hear me? Was there a glitch in the signal? Were these walls too thick? Literal padded walls, that must be what it took for him to finally just give up on me.
In the morning, I asked my nurse for a bible. I could barely remember my own name, but I remembered somewhere in the Psalms was the word I was searching for so desperately. The Catholic hospital didn’t have a Bible on hand. They confiscated my birth control on the way in and a nurse in a high turtle neck condemned the length on my shorts, but they didn’t have a single bible.
I was truly alone. Without even the words God spoke to other people centuries ago, much less anything he had to say to me now. So I wandered around in my linoleum-gripping socks, crying.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
Remember, God? Remember the people who came before me? You spoke to them. None of them ever ended up in the mental hospital (some of them probably should have, but that didn’t help my case).
Later in the day, when I had grown too tired to wander and cry and had resigned to quiet withering on the carpeted cafeteria floor, a Bible was graciously delivered to me- this one my own. My words scribbled in and highlighter bleeding through the pages. But they had cut out the silk page marker. Even this, the very word of God, maimed. I clung to it, I read David’s words aloud over and over (which probably didn’t help my sanity plea) and waited for a voice that never came. My God. My God. Nowhere to be found.
I was released a few days later, but it took months for me to return to a state of being able to care for myself. God and I were not speaking. I could beat anyone at the quiet game, and I intended to prove it.
A year later, almost to the day, I was admitted to another psych hospital after facing death for the second time. This time they had Bibles, a shelf full, but I didn’t go anywhere near them. If God intended to abandon me, I’d watch him leave.
I wonder at what point it was that Jesus decided he actually wanted to die. Was it in the garden when things got real? Was it when he heard the jeers of the crowd? When the nails went in?
I knew when I decided I wanted to die, it was when I called and heard no response. That’s when Jesus finally gave in, wasn’t it? A final call, a Hail Mary shot (no pun intended), and in return, nothing. So he hung his head and breathed his last.
But here’s the thing, unlike Jesus, I didn’t die. I went on living, still not speaking to God, still not understanding, even now, how even though he promised he’d never leave me there wasn’t even a shadow of him in the room that night. What I do know is what I heard, nearly two years later, as I walked next to a meadow on a Thursday afternoon. When the quiet wasn’t so loud, and the whisper of something came from the babbling creek.
My God, is that you?
Natalie is a student in Austin, Texas studying Film and Creative Writing. She is an advocate for mental health and writes about depression and mental illness. She is a nanny and spends her days writing, reading, and trying to find the best pizza in Texas.
Read and Pray
The Fourth Word: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani.)
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. [Lamentations 1:12]
I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago…. He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “Gone is my glory, and my expectation from the Lord.” Remember my affliction and my bitterness, the wormwood and the gall! [Lamentations 3:1-6, 16-21]
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:45-46]
We echo the prayers of Jesus and Natalie: My God, my God, where are you? Is that you?
We give you thanks, Jesus, for bearing the complete abandonment of your God and father so that, even in our darkest days, we are not completely forsaken. Even when darkness feels like our closest friend, when we are sinking down, sinking down, your wondrous love, Jesus, holds open the sliver of light we need to see God.
Help us now as we join Natalie’s prayer: My God, is that you?
Amen.