We grew full of bitterness, not grace.
Years later I would sit at one end of that brown-plaid couch, my dad stretched out along its length. Worn from a day driving tractor, sun beating and wind blowing, he’d ask me to stroke his hair. I’d stroke from that cow-lick of his and back, his hair ringed from the line of his cap. And he’d close his eyes and I’d ask the questions I could never ask looking into them.
“Did you ever used to go to church? Like a long time ago, Dad?” The neighboring Williams family took turns with the van Veen family, picking me up Sunday mornings for the drive into town and services.
“Yeah, we went. Your grandmother had us go every Sunday, after milking was done. That was important to her.”
I kept my eyes on his dark strands of hair running through my fingers.
“But it’s not important to you now?” The words, barely whispered, hung.
He pushed up his plaid sleeves, shifted his head, his eyes still closed. “Oh….”
I waited, hands combing, waiting for him to find the words for those feelings that don’t fit neatly into the stiff ties, the starched collars, of sentences.
“No, I guess not anymore. The day Aimee died, I was done with all of that.”
Scenes blast my memoryscape and I reel.
“And, if there really is Anybody up there, They sure were asleep at the wheel that day.” I don’t say anything, that lump in my throat a glowing, burning ember. I just stroke hair, soothing pain. He finds more feelings, stuffs them into words.
“Why let a beautiful little girl die such a senseless, needless death? And she didn’t just die, like your mother always says. She was killed.”
That word twists his face. His eyes remain closed, but he’s shaking his head now, remembering all there was to say no to that hideous November afternoon that branded our lives.
Dad didn’t need more words. That shake of the head said it all. No. No benevolent Being, no grace, no meaning to it all. He rarely had said all that, only sometimes, when he’d close his eyes and ask me to stroke away the day. But these aren’t things you need to say anyways. Like all beliefs, you simply live them. We did.
No, God. No God.
The air our family breathed, this oxygen of negativity, it wasn’t ours alone. It is our human inheritance, the Garden’s legacy. It’s the bedrock of all sin, this ingratitude of Adam and Eve. The rest of the garden wasn’t enough.
When God said humanity was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God ripped away what we wanted. He stole what we considered rightly ours. He snatched away what we deemed ultimately necessary for our happiness and wholeness. Don’t we keep reliving the Garden, again and again? No longer did we trust Him. No longer was He good. No longer could we see all of the remaining paradise.
When Eve stood there under that tree’s leafy shade, determining that she needed what God had said no to, she closed herself to the rain of His grace. So began our long drought. Focused on that which she was not to have, she lost all that she did have. Ingratitude throws us out the Garden and into the barren wilderness of despair.
And even long after I personally said yes to God, I still lived no, developing macular holes on the retina of my soul. Blind spots, missing God present and giving.
Funny, my soul’s macular hole seemed to spontaneously heal in church. There God’s obvious, close. Bibles lay open in laps, the sanctuary fills with hymnal worship, reverent and real, and the table, spread with the emblems, that singular cup and loaf, calls us to remember, to see. There, even I could see. But the rest of the week, the days lived in the glaring harshness of the gritty world? There, yes, full-thickness macular holes, complete loss of central vision, a world pocked with scarcity. I could find no water well.
I wasn’t good enough, my children weren’t good enough. Our church needed more of this, our community more of that. Now that we’d finally got this fixed, couldn’t we now tackle that? Sure, the new house down the road was lovely, but when were they going to get the lawn seeded? I appreciated the neighbor’s lively conversation, but when he was going to get busy, lose a bit of weight, find a wife?
My sister’s jarring death had torn a hole into the canvas of my world right at my beginning. Now everywhere I looked, I only saw all that wasn’t. Holes, lack, deficiency.
One life loss can infect all of our life, a rash that wears through the fabric of our days, our seeing, with black voids, shadowy fissures, endless abysses.
It means favor, grace does. From the Latin, gratia. Connotes free readiness. A free and ready favor, that’s what grace is.
I took the grace offered at the Cross, the free favor of forgiveness of my sins. But to live as Ann, "full of grace"? Full of all His favors, His gifts? I didn’t know how to patch that gaping gash up.
And so more tore.
Lord, losses burn holes in the soul retina. Leave us blind to You. And the infection spreads. Heal, Lord. So we can see You, find the well of Your living, spilling waters. And end the drought.
Part of this week's prayerful focus on Choices. Part One here. Part Three here.
