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I was a reluctant pilgrim on this dark journey of terminal illness, more reluctant than my brother, it seemed. Mark would live for five more years after he had the herniation in the emergency room. He spent seven days in the medically induced comas before coming back yet again to us. During those five years he would say things like, "Beth, I have no regrets," and "We'll just play it where it lays," using a golfing metaphor.
...This was a spiritual crisis to be sure [when God is silent]. A forest fire had blazed through the landscape of my faith, leaving ashes and singed remnants of a once vibrant Christianity. I needed the help of listening and compassionate friends, the faith and prayers of others, and stories of those who had also suffered and not just survived but whose devastating experiences eventually pushed them into places of growth and beauty.
...What was beginning to surface in me was a hidden belief that if I do certain things, God will reward me in certain ways. When this didn't happen, I was left with deep disappointment. I've worked hard, made sacrifices, tried to do things right, and God has let me down. I don't actually believe this theologically, that my acting dictates God's behaviors in such a direct one-plus-two-equals-three manner, but I was unconsciously operating under this belief.
As I read the psalms, I discovered that my journey of childlike belief and the loss of some of that belief is not a journey of moving away from God but part of the journey all of us are on who seek to honestly engage with God throughout a lifetime. The laments are the prayers offered after the chair has been pulled out from under the people of God. They are the "Where are you, God?" psalms.
...The Psalms of Lament teach me how to pray in the dark. They help me see that God is bigger than both my current felt experience of God and my past assumptions. There is ample room for doubt, anger and confusion in our journey of faith. Reading the psalms might even lead me to believe that if I don't come up against some serious loss of faith from time to time, I might be carrying around a very small God.
~ Beth Allen Slevcove, from Broken Hallelujahs: Learning to grieve the big and small losses of life
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