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| kasher, when he was 3 months old, in a corn field. |
black friday happened last week for me.
it happened on the bed in the office, on the patchwork quilt that my friend stitched for me. it happened in the rumpled form of a writer who was twisted up and crying out to a God she’d felt abandoned her. it happened in “why did you lie to me?” and i’m still atoning for that question.
i’m still atoning for the way i thought i’d heard one thing from God and then something else had happened. and it wasn’t so much what happened as the fact that i heard wrong from God.
it was a kind of giving birth to sorrow, the way my body contracted on that quilt, the way i reached up to the heavens and i know in that black hour God was with me even as i asked him where he was. because the world didn’t end, and when i was done, trent was there to hold me and pour me a glass of wine and cut me a slice of pizza and say that he loved me.
i think the hardest part of not hearing Jesus correctly is doubting everything else you’ve felt him ever say to you.
i am learning that it’s not him i need to doubt, but my interpretation of him. and i never have to fear the questions because romans 8:28 says that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God… not doubts, not fears, not worry, not sin, nothing. so why is the church so full of fear? there’s nothing we can’t tackle, because even on black fridays, even when we’re hanging on the cross and our friends have left us and the world is cracking, God is waiting to resurrect us. waiting to prove the full extent of his love in the form of a cup of wine and a slice of pizza and “i love you.”
i know this isn’t what black friday is truly about, but in some way it is, because it’s about the depravity of human nature. it’s about humanity slipping coins into the offering plate then erecting tables in the temple courts and selling their wares not 24 hours later. but even then, even as Jesus overturns those tables, he’s never going to stop loving us.
so i’ve spent this week just kind of straightening out that quilt i lay on, that bed that felt my sobbing body, and letting myself be held, and letting my world be overturned. i’ve practiced gratitude, even though thanksgiving day happened a month ago here in canada, and i’m letting God resurrect my faith in prayer even as i learn to test the spirits. to hear him, and not just what i want to hear.
because the good thing about black friday is, it makes the rest of the week seem so much brighter. so shine on, my friends.