Rainbows and Prayers

"Lord, I want to know your ways more and more... This is my cry; give me an endless love and thirst for you... That is my cry to you forever, Amen.       Yours only, Rebecca Holmes"                  

-Diary excerpt dated March 18, 1993  (I was 11 years old)

Last week during his nightly prayers Theo asked God to send him a rainbow, preferably soon.

I thought to myself, "Good thing we live in Hawaii!" and promptly informed him that he would be seeing a rainbow sometime during the weekend.  I was sure of it.

On Saturday while driving to Costco, we saw it, slightly foggy and indistinct, but as we rode along the colors became increasingly bright, almost sharp, and ten minutes later it was a full-fledged rainbow stretching across the sky complete with a double.  Yup, there were two of them. 

Theo was ecstatic.  I was happy his prayer was answered.  Theo thanked God and Vincent for sending him the rainbow(s) and then informed us that when he goes to heaven he's going to make it rain for a long while.  Great.  Double great.  

These days Theo seems to be talking a lot about when he gets sick and dies and goes to heaven like his brother.  I've had "rational" conversations with him where I informed him of the low probability of death for a child his age.  We talked about statistics, how most kids in our country don't get cancer.  At other times I've tried different approaches - we've discussed how it is to miss someone you love, how it hurts to wait to see them, but today when he brought up the topic of his death yet AGAIN, I felt like having a fit.  I don't like having conversations with our 4 year old son about his OWN death.  I don't EVER want to think about it, EVER!  I hope I'm long gone before he kicks the can.  So today, when Theo brought up the topic of dying, I felt like having a very angry talk where I would inform him - yes, instruct him - that he was NOT going to die anytime soon, much less get SICK and die, that I was simply NOT going to allow it.  Because I can control things like that, dag nabit! 

Only I can't.  Obviously.  And that stinks.   

Perhaps at the end of my story I'll be able to look back and see how all along my life was an exercise in surrender - the surrender of control, ambition, treasure.  And how with each surrendering, each large and small death, I was brought nearer to the heart of God, the one who lost (and then gained!) it all.

That would be an answer to one of my earliest prayers.  

Downward Mobility

When my son Vincent was diagnosed with liver cancer back in June 2010, my primary goal was to keep life as 'normal' as possible.  I wanted only to get through his treatment and forget it ever happened.  After all, terrible things like childhood cancer don't happen to our family.

Yes, I was experiencing massive amounts of denial.

As we spent week after week in the hospital, I frequently noticed posters advertising the start of a new support group for parents of children with cancer.  Though I initially resisted the thought of hanging out with "the cancer people," our family was thrust into a group of precious individuals well-acquainted with grief, disappointment, and tragedy.  Since attending our first group meeting last year, we have participated whenever possible.  This year alone, two families from the group have watched their children die.  One passed away just a few days ago.

Belonging to a grief-filled community means abandoning the luxury of ignoring life's inherent risks and dangers.  It means admitting fragility and powerlessness over tragic events that shape our brief lives on this planet.  Before Vincent's diagnosis, I belonged to a privileged slice of society whose main worry for their little children concerned where to send them to school and whether or not to vaccinate.  Our family was well on its way to achieving comfortable American middle-classdom.  I held a stable position in church leadership, my husband was completing graduate school, and we were enjoying the development of our two young sons.

One year later, here I am with no job, one less child, and discouraging prospects for the immediate future.  I'm currently a stay-at-home mom to my fragile four-year-old, bartering music lessons for discounted preschool and holding garage sales to pay utility bills.  Much has been lost.

And yet, there remains unlikely connectedness and community in the midst of pain.  We are not the only grieving family.  We recently stayed six weeks in the Philippines where loss and death are all around, homelessness and starvation just a typhoon away.  In a world rife with suffering, our afflictions bring us closer to the life of deep awareness and trust.  Who has time to chase after a bigger house or nicer car when your child is intubated at death's door?  When someone you love passes away, it doesn't matter which name brand you're wearing or what kind of status bag hangs on your shoulder.

For me, participation in a pain-scarred community means living authentically, surviving on faith.  It means caring more about time spent with others than money earned for myself.  Vincent's illness changed my life, not just because he died, but because we are now part of a global community of people who live tremulously. I can no longer presume security and entitlement.  I'm starting to surrender my demands for control, opening my heart to a more simple way of life.  This last year has seen our family begin the path of downward mobility.  Each loss brings a greater appreciation for life's fragile beauty.

I'm reminded of Jesus, our servant king, who willingly chose a humble path marked by sorrow. Scripture says he emptied himself of the glories of heaven in exchange for the poverty and vulnerability of human flesh.  "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head..." He left behind a joyous relationship with his Father to be part of a flawed human family.  He gave up the wealth of heaven to eek out a living as a carpenter, losing celestial perfection for the brokenness of human society—quite an exchange!  He died a criminal's death in order to become the world's greatest hope for peace and reconciliation.  In choosing the downward path at an inestimable cost to himself, he fully identified as one of us, a wounded brother.

Our hospital's Childhood Cancer Connection support group has been a tremendous gift this past year.  I never thought I'd want to be part of a community formed in the shadow of sickness and death.  Ironically, the group continues to enrich me with a greater reverence for life, anchoring me in a context of shared experience, reminding me of what matters most.

There is still a long way to go on this downward path.  I struggle with entitlement, bitterness and anger.  I want more and more things, believing I deserve them for having lost my child.  I often forget how the call to follow Christ is a call to pick up my cross. The smaller and emptier we are, the more space remains to be filled with God's Spirit.  Even though the abundant life is marked with sorrow, it's also punctuated by divine joy.  As John the Baptist once said, "He must increase, and I must decrease."

Mystery (The Problem of Pain)

Because I'm a person of faith, people often ask me if I'm mad at God. Couldn't he have done something to stop Vincent from dying? As Christians, we believe that among God's many attributes are both absolute power and absolute goodness.

The question of how God's love and power relate to each other is one that all theologians and sufferers have wrestled with over the millennia.  If God is good AND powerful, why doesn't he stop horrible events from happening?  Why are there child soldiers, rape, famine, cancer?  Why do kids die?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do bad things happen at all?

Some people think that God, although powerful in nature, sort of ties his hands behind his back by giving us humans free will.  At the end of human history God's powerful enough to win the war against evil (using us, his followers) as we break powers of darkness and evil and incarnate God's power and love to our broken world.  He can be prevailed upon through prayer to change events, but only if the powers of darkness are broken first.  He's absolute goodness, only wanting us to thrive and be full of good things.  He weeps with us when we encounter evil, when we are wounded from the fault of others' free will choices.  From this perspective, it would never be his will to let Vincent die.

Critics of this view say it compromises God's omnipotence (power) in a manner inconsistent with the biblical description.  He can't be a truly all-powerful God if he's wringing his hands over situations he cannot at this moment change without our help.  God ceases to be God if his hands are in any way tied.

Proponents of this next view remind us of our utter sinfulness as humans.  As completely flawed beings who first introduced sin to the world, we deserve whatever the perfect God metes out to us.  We deserve nothing from him, although through his son Jesus we've recieved everything we really need, promise of redemption, the sure hope of eternal life.  God is completely powerful over all world events, he presides over everything that occurs, and though not evil himself, allows evil to exist for a time being for reasons we do not understand.  His goodness is always complete, even when we cannot see it.  From this perspective, it could have been his will to let Vincent die.  (This is usually the point where the discussion veers toward further theological splicing between God's prescriptive will and his decretive will... but I don't want to go there.)

Critics of this view say that God seems to be a cosmic meany.  He's able to change horrible events, able to eliminate all evil, but instead allows it to exist.  (Of course, these views can be nuanced much better than I've stated.  I'm sure I've left many important details out of each one, but then again, I'm much better at ranting then reporting.)

So, the argument goes, either God is completely powerful (and not fully good), or he's completely good (and not fully powerful.)  In the face of deep suffering, it's difficult to believe that God can be both simultaneously. 

Where do I stand? Part of me would like to think that what happened to Vincent was a terrible injustice caused by living in a messed up world.  God would like to have stopped it,  only wanting goodness and wholeness in our lives, but his hands were tied.  But I don't really believe that.  I do believe that Vincent's death was a terrible injustice.  But I believe that God didn't stop it for some reason(s) unknown to me at this time.  I believe he is powerful enough to do it, but for some reason he didn't.

I would like Vincent's death to have as much meaning as possible.  If it was just a random event that occurred, how meaningful is that?  It's like winning the crappiest lottery ever.  Even though I don't believe God specifically ordered in his perfect will for Vincent to get cancer and die, I believe that he did foresee it and let it happen anyway to us.  I believe he could have stopped it, and yet he didn't.

Over the years I've grown to accept this fact:   our world is pretty awful.  It's in the process of being fixed and redeemed, and one day all suffering will cease, and our earth will be renewed.  Until then all sorts of bad stuff happens, largely a result of what we do to each other.  Large corporations want more money, take shortcuts, pollute the water and people get cancer.  We want more power and oil so we go to war.  Kids get killed.  Women get raped, the environment gets exploited, stuff gets stolen, we die, awful, awful evil happens and gets thrown our way.  It's the way of this world.

Now where does God fit into this?  Well, I believe that whatever transpires in our life, whatever events in life we go through, they have to pass through God's hands first.  He doesn't cause them, but he makes sure that whatever they are, they are something that we are able to triumph over, if not in this life, than the next.  He makes sure we get justice, if not now, than later.  And in the meantime, all the awful things that happen that would try to destroy us, he can transform into scars of beauty, into something useful for helping someone else's pain.  God is very economical.  He doesn't waste our pain, our wounds.  If we let him, he as the ultimate alchemist transforms our tragedies into something beautiful, useful, something that brings him glory.

I've always known that God does not keep us "safe".  That's not his ultimate goal.  And from the viewpoint of eternity, what does being "safe" really mean?  Are you safe if you have a comfortable home now, happy relationships, a good bank account, and yet who you truly are deep inside is conflicted, without peace?  Are you "safe" if you've never been deeply hurt or in a debilitating accident, but your inner soul is isolated from the one Reality that can offer transcendent living, real hope?

The apostle Paul in Colossians 3 says this:

"...For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God."

My Real life, who I truly am and am becoming, my real beauty, my real strength is all hidden with Christ up there in heaven.  It's kept truly safe with God and with Vincent who is one of my greatest treasures.  It's out of reach for now, but it's part of a greater Reality that I cannot see, a Reality that goes far and beyond what think is "real".

I watched Toy Story III just a few weeks before Vincent died and it gave me a useful analogy to describe the way I feel about his death.  In the movie, Mrs. Potato Head loses one of her eyes somewhere in Andy's house.  She can't find it, and after different events transpire, she, along with all the other toys, wind up in this horrible daycare where they are mistreated and are trying to escape.  They need to know what is happening back at home, and Mrs. Potato Head is able to channel her vision through her hidden eye, the one back at home, to see what is happening and to be connected to what was going on there.  She didn't have that eye physically with her, so she was blocking out what she could see right in front of her face, and instead, "seeing" with her missing eye.

I have to use my "missing" eye, the one that is hidden in God, to see the greater Reality there in heaven as opposed to just what is in front of me at this moment.

My spiritual director lent me her copy of Susan Howatch's book "Glamorous Powers."  Here the main character, Jon, an Anglo-Catholic ex-monk, is comforting his wife after their baby son Gerald has just died.

"...Look at the world from yet another angle.  Look at it as an idea in the mind of God, a brilliant dynamic idea which we ourselves can't fully grasp except that its dynamism ties us to the change we can't escape.  But beyond the idea, beyond the mind of God, is God himself, the unchanging perfection of ultimate Reality.  In other worlds, this cage we live in, this prison of time and space isn't ultimately real. Gerald may have slipped out of the cage ahead of us, but that doesn't mean he's ceased to exist.  As part of the ultimate reality his existence is reflected back into the world of time and space in the form of absolute values, the values which can never die, and the value in which we can most clearly see him reflected is love..."

I will see Vincent again.  But right now I have to use my other eye to see the ultimate Reality beyond this prison of time and space.  And until I see Vincent again with both my eyes, I'm going to try and reflect his life, and the life of God who is the ultimate Reality, back into this world.

Lost and Found

Yesterday the BPA and phthalate-free plates & feeding utensils I ordered online for Theo (after my late-night panic attack) arrived in the mail.  Theo was ecstatic about having a spoon and fork that looked like a fork lift and a some kind of loading truck.  Plus, there was a third utensil, a "shovel" that you can use to push the food onto the fork/spoon.  Very clever.  Especially if you're 3.5 years old.

Since our "safer" new stuff arrived, I took the opportunity to clean out our cupboards that were cluttered up with kiddie plates, utensils, cups, and all sorts of baby to toddler-ish feeding paraphernalia.

And that's when I found it, locked inside a twist-to-seal baby feeder.  I saw the flash of gold and then, suddenly, I knew what it was, in a brilliant moment of joy.  It was my lost golden necklace and pendant, the chain part from Dan, and the pendant a present from my dad on my 18th birthday.  It's the only jewelry item I have left from my dad since our house was broken into the week after Vincent's funeral.

During the break-in the thieves took our cameras, computers and external hard drives, all of which contained our videos and pictures of Vincent.  We lost around 75% of all our video footage of Vincent.  And they took all my "real" jewelry that they could find.

Except for this gold necklace that was in the bathroom.

For days after the break-in, I started hiding all my remaining items that I wanted to keep safe.  I hid Vincent's favorite stuffed animals, blankies, my not-so-valuable jewelry, our spare change, and this necklace.  Before going out I would hide this necklace in the most random of places until the day came that I couldn't for the life of me remember where I put it.  I cleaned out two closets and moved 3 dressers.   It was nowhere to be found.

So I lost a lot to these thieves... and then I lost even more to Fear.   I still have some awesome earrings that are so *safely* hidden I may never find them.

Fear often leads us to hide things. We may think we're protecting them, keeping them safe, but it may take us years before we rediscover what was lost.  Sometimes we may never find them again. It makes me wonder - what else have I hidden?  Perhaps it's a talent or a calling or a memory, inaccessible now, unusable. What else in my life has Fear taken from me?  Have I lost anything of brilliance or beauty or of great worth, locked away inside of me, out of sight, out of mind?

What's the point in "protecting" something precious only to lose it?  What's the point of preserving something to the point of rendering it inaccessible to our deepest selves?

Ironically, we as humans tend to lose whatever it is we hold most closely.  Maybe that's why Jesus said that to find your life, you first have to give it up.  We have to hold it loosely, we have to keep it vulnerable.  Because when we fearfully hide it, it's gone from us, out of reach, unable to be of any use, truly lost in the fullest sense of the word. But when we hold our lives open to God, willing for them to be lost in Him, that's when we find what it is that's been hidden from us all along.

When we are willing to give our lives up, that's when they're found.  That's the ultimate paradox.

As we begin this season of Lent, may you find whatever it is that you have fearfully lost along the way.   And may we be willing to boldly lose our deepest treasures, knowing that's how they'll really be found.

...And hopefully I'll eventually find that darn pair of earrings.