When It All Comes Crashing Down
Thoughts on chronic illness and being angry at God
When I was growing up, my room went through many different variations. It was yellow, then it was pink and purple, then it was blue and green, then it was covered with so many individual Kodak pictures that I’m pretty sure the walls were perforated and held up entirely by pushpins. (Also, posters of Wicked, Chad Michael Murray, and Evanescence. I contain multitudes...)
During the pink and purple era, we used feather dusters, rubber stamps, and also for some reason celery crowns (?) to paint designs all over my walls. Mom and I would then spend hours looking for shapes in the colorful flourishes like you do with clouds, seeing mermaids and fairies and roses and teddy bears. I loved those pink and purple walls.
I also helped my dad with a lot of projects in his workshop. He built bookshelves and stained tables and painted the shed, so therefore I helped build and stain and paint. (“Helped” might be up for debate, here, come to think of it. If you had asked him, he might have used a different word, but thankfully he let me tag along anyway).
After this, I went through a phase that lasted a good decade and a half when I waged war on pink. Pink was for frilly, weak, girly girls, or so I thought, and I wanted to be thought of as powerful and independent, not weak and girly. (I was raised by multiple generations of feminists, but even they were apparently no match for the heroine-chic trends of the 90’s and 00’s, when “thin was in,” and “lacy and delicate” were what it meant to be feminine, and since I was already 5’7” and shoe size 9.5 in the 5th grade, “lacy and delicate” were not adjectives I ever received.)
So I swore off pink and wore bright orange and jewel tones instead, and I cut my hair, and I wielded power tools (safely! adeptly! no help needed!), and I went on mission trips, and I worked 3 jobs while taking an overload of classes (15 hours is the max, you say? Nah, bruh, I’m taking 18). I was an Adult and I Didn’t Need Anyone to Help Me, thank you very much.
And then I went to grad school, and though my war on pink lessened a good bit, the misguided notions of independence did not. I moved across the country, went to school, worked, had a social life, commuted in Dallas traffic, and was Doing Life on My Own Terms. I graduated, served churches, made friends, moved about 6 times, met and married my husband, cared for everyone around me, and somehow also managed to stay thin and fit and on trend.
And then skinny jeans went out of style.
And a pandemic happened.
And I got sick.
And it all came crashing down.
Even after the initial illness was gone, I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t get through a full day of work without a migraine. I couldn’t grocery shop without getting dizzy and shaky and almost passing out. If I walked more than a few feet, nerve pain would start searing through my limbs. (Plus I had to get new, wide-leg jeans, which millennials hate more than just about anything…)
I realized I was not Doing Life on My Own Terms, and honestly probably never had been, and probably never would again.
And none of this is new. It’s a story as old as time, and has happened to so many people that it’s almost too cliche to write about it. You thought you were invincible, then [fill in the blank] happened and you realized you weren’t. Blah blah. Snooze. Boring. Move on. Get over it.
But for me, it was new. It was painful. It was devastating, actually. And to be honest I’m still grieving my old life.
And to be even more honest, I’m angry.
Which is not a sentence that is easy for an Enneagram One, Wing Nine (both Ones and Nines are notorious for not knowing how to handle our anger) to say.
I’m angry that I’m sick. I’m angry that I had to give up the best career in the world. I’m angry that I can’t predict how I’ll feel more than 5 minutes into the future. I’m angry at the people who were careless during a global freakin’ pandemic and whose selfish actions led to me getting sick. I’m jealous of the people whose bodies were able to fight off the virus and have no lasting impacts. I’m angry at my body for failing me. I’m angry… at God.
Wow that's hard to say.
I’ve always been the one who doesn’t really have crises of faith. I never went through a phase of rebellion, never left the church, never gave up on religion, never prodigal-child-ed my way through adolescence and early adulthood. I’ve known I wanted to be a musician since I was about 6. I’ve known I wanted to be a minister since I was 19. My relationship with God has always been, well, pretty idyllic.
And then my grandmama died. And then my cousin died. And then my husband and I got Covid. And then we had to put our cat to sleep. And then my kids’ aunt was killed. And then my dad’s cancer came back, and his prognosis went from “you have 5 years left” to “you have 5 weeks left.” And I watched him take his last breath. And for the first time in my life I felt like God was silent.
I believe in the sun
Even when it’s not shining.
I believe in love
Even when I don’t feel it.
I believe in God
Even when God is silent.
Nadia Bolz-Weber likes to say that the purpose of communal singing and communal creeds (aka statements of faith — those things you say together at church that start with “I believe” or “We believe” and, yes, do sound a bit creepy if you’re not used to hearing dozens or hundreds of people read together in unison monotone, because side note we really need to work on being expressive when we talk in church, but I digress), the purpose of these communal actions is to hold each other up. I personally may not believe all the different items or pieces of this creed or that hymn on any given day. And you personally may not believe all of them, either. But maybe I can believe a few of the things you need to hear, and vice versa. Maybe you can hold me up, and I can hold you up. Maybe when I say “God is silent,” you can say, “God is here with you.” Maybe when you say “my parent is dying,” I can say “I’ve been there, come sit next to me and cry.”
Because what has decidedly not been silent through all this is my community. That sucker has been LOUD. My community has come through for me in ways I could not have imagined, and certainly do not deserve. They have shown up to metaphorically read me the creeds I do not believe at the moment, because that’s what community does. It turns out God can be as silent as she wants, but the rocks, aka the people of God, the stuff of this earth, the very atoms of the universe, are crying out. Are singing. Are laughing. Are working. Are assisting. Are fixing. Are advocating. Are marching. Are being wholehearted and unselfish and healing parts of me that have been broken for longer than I have allowed myself to realize.
It’s super annoying how writing works for me. I started this post filled with so much sadness, anger, and loneliness. But the act of writing, of linking my friend Mark Miller’s beautiful song “I Believe” above (if you missed it, scroll back up and click the underlined words and it’ll take you to a lovely little YouTube video), of thinking about my friends and how annoyingly great they are, that has lightened my load a bit. At least for now. The next 5 minutes may bring some new challenge or upset, and at that point I’ll start all over again.
Cry. Rage. Sing. Heal. Repeat.
So anyway, I like pink again now.
Hey, thanks for taking time to read my words! I’ll be here as often as my brain and body allow.