Lament Stories

Dear friend,

This post kicks off a week of guest posts to help us keep vigil with Jesus, each other, and our own hearts through Holy Week.

Jesus gave us a litany of last words, known as the Seven Last Words of Christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for Holy Week. Each day between now and Resurrection Sunday, seven friends will share their own stories to help us retrieve lament and to keep vigil with Jesus. Their stories have helped form my understanding of cruciform suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too.

Each short story will be paired with an image, a Scripture passage, and a prayer. This year I’ve curated a series of contemporary icons from Ukrainian iconographers. As we hold space for each other’s stories, we take shelter under the outstretched arms of Christ for every story of suffering around the world. In order to lean toward the suffering in Ukraine, one of our storytellers is giving us the opportunity to send help to two organizations on the ground in Ukraine and neighboring friendly countries, and to receive a special thank you gift from Michelle Van Loon in return.

Thank you for sitting with me in my own story today. May you listen with an open prayerful heart and know the shelter of Christ for all that you lament this week.

Peace,

Tamara

p.s. Would you invite a friend to join us to read the stories with us?

Jesus gave us a litany of last words, known as the Seven Last Words of Christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for Holy Week. Each day between now and Resurrection Sunday, seven friends will share their own stories to help us retrieve lament and to keep vigil with Jesus. Their stories have helped form my understanding of cruciform suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too.

Each short story will be paired with an image, a Scripture passage, and a prayer. This year I’ve curated a series of contemporary icons from Ukrainian iconographers. As we hold space for each other’s stories, we take shelter under the outstretched arms of Christ for every story of suffering around the world. In order to lean toward the suffering in Ukraine, one of our storytellers is giving us the opportunity to send help to two organizations on the ground in Ukraine and neighboring friendly countries, and to receive a special thank you gift from Michelle Van Loon in return.

Would you read our friend Art's story with an open heart for any words Christ might be speaking to you?

But I’ve also seen what it looks like when true community is forged from shared surrender to God, and it has ruined me for ersatz versions. Compelled by the self-giving love of Jesus, it always looks just like one disciple opening the door to another to welcome them in fully and completely as family – because in him, that is what we are meant to be for one another.

In the shalom that God designed for his creation, my mother was to be more like Mary, my father was to be more like Joseph, my life was to be more like Jesus’. I look at this passage and this time see how dimly our dingy triptych stands in comparison to the ideal. I can taste the absence of his kingdom and I am hungry for it with a deep ache that cuts back through the years to my earliest memories.

"There is something about generational blessing that I think is important. It is a way of passing on something mystical, a deep calling another deep, a spiritual DNA of sorts. I believe all parents should bless their children and, at the proper time, all children should bless their parents. I took it upon myself to bless him whenever I saw him. I secretly hoped that he would bless me in return. And perhaps he has. As I write this, I wonder if perhaps he has. Blessings have a way of boomeranging.”

And, the number of people who pleaded with the Father for my son (who is currently healthily crying upstairs. His life may be an answer to prayer, but that doesn’t mean he wants to take a nap). When I visited my sister’s church in Austin, TX in January of 2016, nearing 7 months and clearly great with child, the woman who came up to me and put her hand on my belly and said, with boldness, “I am invested in this child!”, I knew without a doubt she and so many others were.

When Max died, we suffered for something. Our suffering was redemption because we did it with our hope in Christ. God redeemed the very act of suffering not by negating it, but by bringing meaning and purpose to it, making it more whole than it was, more complete and holy. When we lost our plans for a future missionary life, I didn't have the faith to believe there was purpose or meaning. In this way, the pain and anguish from this loss quickly overtook my pain for our son. It became the less bearable of the two, and the one I avoided.

What happens when you find yourself squaring off with an angry toddler trying to cash a massive emotional check from an account with far too few deposits in its balance history? These moments have been peppered throughout Zeke's time in our family, and they have been moments of deep grief for me as a parent. Grief for all that my son lost before he came to us. Grief that my gut reactions to his angry behavior are often selfish and lacking compassion. Grief, and even shame, that I should have to work so hard on something that I feel should come naturally (namely, motherly love and affection). And grief that even after two years in our family, my son is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, still keeping a lookout for the next upheaval, still guarding his heart.

As our family learned how to navigate grief, bellies around us continued to swell with life, and children were adopted seemingly with ease. I started to become acutely aware of the obsession in Christian culture with having lots of children (more equals blessed). I began to reckon with the fact that we had one child, and we may only ever have one child. Did that mean God wasn't pleased with us? Was there some sin we weren't aware of that He was punishing us for?

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.

After completing my last surgery, I received permission for emergency travel from my command (as all military members must), handed-off of my patients to my colleagues, and hopped on a plane with Jeff the next morning to Taiwan, where my parents had moved back to after I went off to college. In the states, I am comfortable navigating the medical system and have the inside advantage of being embedded within; in Taiwan, I am just a family member who speaks broken Chinese without any insight into their medical system. And here I was, put in charge of making medical decisions with the help of Google Translate.

The past five years I have lived in Lent. The church calendar has ticked by but I have stayed here in the barren place, the dark place where hope is for others and resurrection is a belief but not tangible. It’s one of those long stories, too long certainly for this space, with long emotions and long components, but familiar too – grief, hurt, expectations not met, illness, grief, uncertainty, abuse, adoption, mental illness, destruction. Many families enter into these lands, and many families fall apart. We did. Some families are able to weather the storm. We couldn’t.

Our classes would gather in the school’s main hallway each morning, lining ourselves against glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. The teachers stood in their jackets and drank coffee, bracing themselves against the cold breeze that flowed through the ever-opening doors. We shrank back from the cold ourselves, tucking our arms and legs and chins inside our coats. One morning, Ms. Reed marched along our line and stood in front of me. “Stand up, Backous,” she said, her loud voice booming over my head. “Unzip your coat.”

I felt my face twist up as I pulled down the zipper. Ms. Reed sipped her coffee. “You are not appropriately dressed. You cannot wear T-shirts with what we talked about. Go call your mother.”

Actually, I was furious with God. I would have told Him, but I was too afraid to say how I felt out loud. Why would a God who called Himself good leave a little boy all by himself?  When a friend finally gave me permission to say it out loud,  I fell to the ground under the weight of my sadness. Through tears and clenched teeth, I yelled, “Why God, why did you leave me? Where were you?”

I want some satiating, magical potion to restore those years to me.

Jesus’s last words “I thirst” remind me that He - the most satiating, life-giving, Living Water - also thirsted. What did he thirst for, hanging there on the cross? In the midst of excruciating pain, I find it hard to believe those words were merely asking for a drink. Maybe He spoke those words for me so that I would remember that my Savior also felt pain and grief. And that He knows my thirst and weeps with me in the midst of mine.

It is OK to cry out to Him in my loneliness, in my frustrated sexual being, in my uncertainty, to mourn the life He called me out of, even if I find myself desiring it once more. It is OK to weep for the loss of a broken life. We must, in fact, let go of every “if” or “might have been” to truly follow Him without reservation. Let them float away like balloons, in an array of tears, offerings to Him that set us on the good path. He knows what we gave (give) up, and He can take the tears of pain and anger as we grieve our vinegar thirsts.

Yes, we strive towards some kind of new normal, but that is hard to swallow too. I think it's because we rarely believe or think that the "new normal" will last very long. We tend to think it's more like going to another country where there are different customs and languages and foods and even restrictions, and everything seems different and for the duration of your stay that is your "new normal." But you know that you will eventually come home and the "new normal" will have been temporary, and you will resume your "old normal." 

You need good friends when you walk with people through their most tender and hard places. Trey, Dick, and I became good friends, brothers really.

Then they died.

Many of you were and some still are people we've never met - yet you have become family to us.  You have loved us.  You have personified what Jesus said in Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

I grew up poor, but I have never known such need as this past year: emotional, spiritual, physical.  And Jesus used many of you to meet many of those needs. 

With my leg stretched out in front of me, I watched the stain of red seeping through the fat wad of gauze around my toe. The aching pain moved up my leg, and I sobbed. I had no mother; I had no father. I felt so very alone, in a house on the edge of town, with no pictures on the walls and no curtains at the window.

I had a black mother who gave birth to five perfectly healthy babies and lived to tell the tale. Given the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate of black American women that still plagues us today, I am nothing short of a miracle. My daughter is a miracle. Therefore, it shouldn’t be hard at all to believe that Jesus of Nazareth died on a cross given the extraordinarily high rate of crucifixions in His day. However, when I read that He cried out from the cross, “It is finished,” do I believe Him? Is this it? Is this how it all ends? What kind of man is this? 

Jesus spoke the words "It is finished" just before he died on the cross. One of the meanings of these words was that his earthly life was over. Death, a cruel enemy, is the end of all our earthly lives. I am lamenting my loss that will never be undone. I am grieving and angry that I never had a dad. I mourn for all who are mourning, and for every life cut short.

When my mother was sentenced to serve 8-25 years in prison on the charge of involuntary manslaughter, we all said, “This is it,” which in our hearts translated to, “So, this is how it all ends.” She was nearly 60 and all of us, her children, were grown but still asking ourselves,”What kind of woman is this? Troubles ride on the wind and land at her feet.”

In a way, it’s beautiful to be so empty, so broken. There are no more valiant, heroic measures to try to save the marriage. No more prayers and hopes for a miracle. After twenty-five years, it is finished. No more praying through the book, The Power of the Praying Wife. No more begging for the truth and longing to be loved. No more working too hard to find a way to measure up. Always striving for more: more wealth, more power, more recognition, and more love. No more busy running here and there, over-committing to good things that distract and deflect from the best things.

They are heavy memories. I keep them piled like discarded bricks in the back of my mind. Every now and then I try to put them into some kind of shape that makes sense, all the while knowing that there are pieces I won’t ever figure out how to fit together. Despite my faith, there was a descent to dark places. I struggled to understand the purpose of pain, of loss. I questioned God’s goodness and His love for me.

Faith was hard. Sometimes, even seven years later, it still is. There has been only one thought that has brought me any comfort some days, and it is this: I serve a God who watched His only son die.

People tell me from time to time that I’m just like my father. And there was a time when I didn’t like to hear that. But now I’m proud to say that in many ways, I am like my father.

The doctor surely thought I was just an overwrought patient in denial. He checked his smartphone and looked back at me. I was not going along with a cut and dry visit schedule. I was being a little too blunt about my lack of appreciation for the options. I blubbered on.

“It is the suffering, because of ‘treatment’, that I dread. Not death. By the way – again, no disrespect intended – you doctors don’t go through your own treatment.”

I wept for days. And just when the crushing weight felt like it might reside, it overwhelmed again. In the past, I’d operated under the “pick yourself up and move on” method of life. You know the times when you press forward suppressing all the emotion, all the hurt because it’s easier.  But as I wept I felt invited by the Spirit to sit with the grief. To allow myself to feel the deep sadness of her brokenness and our unmet expectations. To not push through to happier days, but sit with the why’s. …

Into the hands of Christ, I commit my sad, angry, frustrated, weeping spirit. Welcome grief. 

My grandson lived; he lived for 6 ½ years. We got to know him and love him deeply. I spent many hours leaning over a hospital bed, watching him, and praying for him. We exchanged goofy face pics and sweet voice messages from long distances. He called me Nana, and I can still hear his voice saying, Naa naaa’, in his slightly reproachful tone and grinning face, in response to something silly I did. I wear a shirt he loved because it has rhinestones and sequin embroidery and I can still feel his hands tracing the letters of “Istanbul” on my shirt. And then, quite suddenly Yahya died. I stood by my daughter’s side as she and her husband buried his ashes. …

Where is that peace that passes understanding, where are you, God? And I long for what ancients say can come after the wall: to know God’s sweetness and love, to have peace and rest, and a deep inner stillness. I am almost ready again to say, “Into your hands I commend my spirit”, and I believe when I do, I will pass through the wall to a sweeter knowledge of Him.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment a dream officially dies. I know this because I still wake up each morning expecting to find myself living the super excellent fantasy life so clearly laid out in Natalie’s Plan to Be Good at Everything and Take Over the World, Probably. The Dream I once put my whole life’s purpose in is gone, like losing a friend whom I once turned to for comfort every day. The Dream was the one who woke me up and said ‘you can do it! I believe in you!’ Now when I wake up in my twin sized bed in my parents home, with no plan or purpose for the day, the Dream isn’t there to greet me. So I slide out of bed and pour a cup of coffee, my bathrobe hanging from my shoulders like a shawl of disappointment. …

The mourning isn’t over. Actually, I’m unsure if it’s even begun. Instead, I’m left only with a promise of goodness and hope, and a shield from harm. What comes next, I don’t know. But I do know what comes last, I do know the final destination for this nomad heart of mine. And for now, today, that is enough.

Sometimes love feels fierce as hate-

mingling down in howling tears. 

It's hard to tell the difference

Am I crying for my kid?

Am I crying for myself?

Which makes me wonder

What your mother felt the day she cradled 

your dead body?

Because I know the end of the story, 

I have a hard time seeing grief.

It's too easy to skip that day

and say Sunday's coming!

I need to hear middles of stories.

So I can see.  Maybe not hear or

see, but feel.

In God’s mysterious and inexplicable ways he has taken mine and your mother’s broken DNA and woven in an extra copy of the 23rd chromosome into you.  The grief that that news brought us has been gradually replaced with expectation of blessing.  The stories that surround different boys, girls, men, and women with Down Syndrome that have come our way since your diagnosis have been consistently stories of childlike and irreplaceable joy.  

Life has its costs and its benefits and the thing about believing in God is that we look with faith for surpassing blessing. Life is not a zero sum game for those who love God.

A eulogy to an ex-friend:

I've given up hope for now, but let's put a pin in it

-- until the One holding that first breath of 

once-dead for all the coming-alive-again in His 

unbloodied mouth

breathes hot life on us in the new city,

the new garden where we get to try again.

Forever.