Wrestling with God
Jacob wrestling with the Angel icon by Georgi Chimev
I was watching an old interview with Stephen Colbert from CNN recently, and Colbert said, in reference to losing his father and two older brothers in a plane crash at the age of ten, “I am grateful for the one thing I most wish had not happened.” Then he quoted J.R.R. Tolkien by saying, “What punishments of God are not gifts?” This struck me. He talked at length about how he “started over” developmentally at the time of their death, and was now a different person than he would have been, had the tragedy not happened at all. And he was grateful for his life, and for the person he had become.
It's been almost 15 years since my older sister, Petra, died in a car crash. Especially when I am busy or stressed, I don’t always think of her every day. I think the longer time goes on, I tell myself I can “afford” to forget her for a bit, to get through hard times. I don’t ever really forget her, you know. Her memory haunts the subconscious parts of my psyche, even or especially when I intend to push it aside.
Watching this interview naturally brought questions to my mind. How am I different than the person I would have been without suffering such a loss? What changed in me and my life when I lost my sister? And finally, how do I feel about these differences? Are they things I can ever feel grateful for?
Did my life take a turn that day in a different direction? Let’s take a look at the evidence. I had started attending a Catholic church in the months before Petra died, and I was looking to become Catholic. When I shared the news of my sister’s death with someone at the church, I was told I should see Sister Sharon, a spiritual director at the church. A what? I had never heard of spiritual direction before, but thought maybe a “professional” could help me through this grief. So, I started going to Sister Sharon once a month. She was a kind, empathetic listener. More than that, she gave me the opportunity to “get real” with what I really thought about my life, my sister, and God. Grief does that to a person, if they let it happen. I was so hungry for meaning to her death, but Sr. Sharon never handed it to me, and I never found it anywhere. That was the beginning of breaking open for me.
Looking for meaning in trauma and suffering was old hat to me. As a survivor of childhood abuse and sexual assault, I had always been “silver lining” it, just *knowing* there was a purpose to my memories of horror and pain. I simply hadn’t figured it out yet. The trauma of my sister’s accident and death was different, largely with Sr. Sharon’s help. I began to see I would never find a satisfactory meaning or silver lining to Petra’s death. The great spiritual insight of my life was that sometimes… life just sucks. I don’t know why. I can’t know why. I won’t know why.
Letting go of possible silver linings left me hungry for depth in my life. I still wanted some kind of meaning, even in facing the infinite existential void of being alive. Like the biblical Jacob, I wrestled with God all through the dark night, not giving up until I’d received God’s blessing. I found a thousand ways to ask God why, but the blessing alluded me. There simply was no good to be found from her death, to make it worth all the pain.
There was however, peace in acceptance of living with my pain, and my greatest consolation came from connecting with others I could empathize with, sitting with them in their heartbreak. That was the beginning of my spiritual direction ministry. “Life can really suck. How do we move forward from feeling peace in our despair? Is God’s blessing really to be found at the bottom?” I had no answers, and neither did others I would accompany, but we could now wrestle with God together, and just see what happens.
It all came together many years later, when I faced my own mortality, in my diagnosis of liver disease in 2022. One of the most impactful spiritual experiences of my life came because of this. One day, it occurred to me that the immense suffering and trauma of my life, the abuse, the sexual assault, my sister’s death, were somehow all gifts. It turned out the blessing from God I had waited expectantly for was the simple gift of being alive.
In 2022, following this realization, I applied to The Haden Institute’s Spiritual Director certification program. In my first assignment, a spiritual autobiography, I wrote the following about this insight:
“I finally let everything happen to me. Life, death, illness, wellness, prosperity, poverty, adversity, terror, beauty, compassion, and… love. I have reflected on the trauma of my childhood, and the difficult, painful times of adulthood, when I did not know of God’s presence. He was in all of it! He was with me, he was with my abusers and bullies, he was in the trees, and the snails, he was in the terror and heartbreak and fear. He was in the loneliness. There was never anywhere that God wasn’t. And God’s presence truly transforms all things into love. I no longer try to reject or “move on” from my past, I welcome it. Saying “yes” to all things, ALL THINGS, past, present, and future, that come my way is the first key to unlocking inner freedom.”
The meaning in my life I had searched for, the blessing I’d been wrestling with God for, was God’s essence saturating every aspect of my life. It’s something I have never been able to unsee, God’s self in the world, in life and in death, in everything and everyone. And I never would have discovered the Great Blessing of Life, if the tragedy of my sister’s death had not sent me searching for it. So yes, with Stephen Colbert, and with Tolkien, I say, “What punishments of God are not gifts?” It’s all Gift. And I am Grateful.
Amen.
