the pressed olive

 

When I was in high school and college, I filled my spaces – my bathroom walls, my shower wall, my daily planner with beautiful, inspiring quotes from favorite authors, characters of books or movies, from songs, and from the Bible. One of the ones that was taped on the wall of my shower said, 

 

“’I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ – Jesus”

Despite recognizing the beauty in this quote from Jesus, and feeling inspired by it, I had had very little reason to understand it. My childhood had been perfect… ideal in every way.  I grew up on a cul-da-sac, where I spent hours riding bikes, climbing trees, and playing games with my sister and six other kids, one of who happened to be my best friend and Dad’s associate pastor’s child. It was the childhood depicted in the best stories or movies, as I was surrounded by joy and life was fun, memorable, and full of play. Adding to the beauty of my childhood was that I also grew up with sound, mature theology. My Dad was my pastor, and although pastor’s kids have a reputation of being rebellious, I admired and respected both my Mom and Dad, because they lived what the preached. I often think pastor’s kids go “wrong” because they see their parents doing one thing at home and doing another thing in public. My parents never allowed their congregants expectations to guide them in the way that they raised us, but rather their own convictions, and as a result, I never strayed. I loved to sit in on conversations that my Dad and his associate pastor and closest friend would have. I grew up listening to them discuss their prayer meditations of the Psalms, something Dad has been doing for over 30 years, or their discussions of books from the likes of C.S. Lewis or Henry Nouwen… conversations where “iron sharpened iron”, and I sat on the sidelines learning. I have loved Jesus my whole life, and I have experienced Him in some deep ways. 

Yet somehow, despite my sound theology, happy childhood, and love of Jesus, I had grown to misunderstand the concept of God’s “plan” for our lives and His “desire” for our happiness. I now refer to the false theology that I had unwittingly adopted as “the entanglement of Christianity and the American dream”. Three days after my 31st birthday, on May 24, 2014, my world came crashing down on me when I had a terrible and traumatic delivery of my premature (29 week) twins. Ironically, not even 12 hours before I had sat with my feet propped up on the dashboard of my husband’s car, talking about a "birth plan", and I had said, “I have been praying about this delivery since the day I found out I was having twins… and I believe that God, who gave me these twins, will get me through this delivery.” I would never EVER have considered myself a “name it and claim it” kind of Christian, but there I was, assuming that I understood God’s plans, and claiming that my prayers had guaranteed me an outcome that I hoped for. It seems kind of arrogant now looking back on it that I assumed that I knew that God wanted me to have a smooth delivery, or that I knew what was in His plans… but somehow, along the way, despite being a Christian well versed on the shipwrecks and imprisonments of Paul, the sufferings of Job, the crucifixion of Jesus... I had without realizing it become a Christian who believed that if I prayed about it, then God would do it for me, and that if I wanted it, then God must want it too. 

 

Later, looking back on my attitude, I realized that my Christianity had gotten tangled up with my American dream. I had unconsciously grown to believe that if I worked hard enough to do “right” and to have a good and happy life, that I could achieve it. Essentially, I truly thought that I believed that God was in control, but my actions and even my prayers suggested that I actually thought I was, and that much was dependent on my own positive attitude and dreams. And in this false understanding, I made the serious error of assuming that when God answered one prayer (i.e. to get pregnant… and he had shown me his will lined up with my will on this issue…) that it would mean that His will for the entire process (i.e. the delivery) would also line up with my will in the same way. When 12 hours after my declaration of “Him getting me through…” I had a very bad and traumatic labor and subsequent delivery, it felt as if God had abandoned me. Well, not immediately…honestly, if it had just been just a bad delivery, I think I would have seen it and declared it as “God making beauty from the unexpected”, and continued falsely believing that his ultimate goal is my happiness. 

 

The journey of understanding that God is good, even when he does not answer our prayers the way we pray, and that joy does not equate to happy, began in time, after we got our twins home from the NICU, and we began to realize that one of our daughters had some motor problems (and was eventually diagnosed with cerebral palsy). My initial reaction, however, was not that God was good, but rather that my prior confidence in God's provision had been stupid and naive, and ultimately anger set in. 

I knew ALL the right things to say to my friends and family… I could talk all day about, “finding purpose in the pain of the NICU, and the blessings of the girls not being worse off…” I had grown up so immersed in Christian lingo, that it was easy to pretend that I was okay, despite the fact that I felt that my heart had been stabbed with a knife and I could feel the blood and my life spilling out of it. And the thing was, I wanted to be angry… I could barely talk to my Dad, because he had been the figurehead that I had most seen God reflected in… I could not bear to hear him insist on God’s goodness despite his granddaughter, my daughter, struggling to learn basic movements and motor skills. I held on to the anger, and lashed out at those who encouraged me to find beauty or hope in the situation.  

 

After months of feeling like I was suffocating in anger and grief, two things happened to start my process towards healing.  The first was that my sister said to me one day while we talked on the phone, “If this handicap is her fate, you can not fix it or control it, but the one thing you can control, and the one thing you she deserves for you to give her is a joyful Mom.” And I knew she was right… and so I began to try. I began Christian   grief counseling, and began to try to let go of the bitterness that was beginning to define my attitude. 

 

The second thing that happened was discovering Tim Keller’s book, “Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering.” I have an acquaintance who has twin daughters with a genetic mutation that has caused a severe handicap in both of her girls. She had shared some quotes from this book on her Instagram page, and I had bought it within seconds of reading the quote. As I read and processed the words in this book, I began to peel away at the false theology that I had unknowingly come to believe. So much in that book is just basic Christianity, but I realize now that when you grow up hearing it, and unfamiliar with true suffering, you can almost become dulled or unimpressed by the sufferings of Jesus. 

 

In time, I began to try to view my situation and my grief through the lens of the cross. It has not been an easy road, but the healing began when I began to understand and recognize my false assumption that Christianity equals American Dream, perfect life. I do find grief to be like an ocean… vast, strong, and unpredictable. You may think you’ve found a sweet spot that you can kick back in, floating on your back, and out of no where a wave can crash down on you.. sometimes the waves are rough but quick, and sometimes they can be strong, and suck you down until you are not certain if you will ever stop spinning, much less be able to rest, but thanks to the new clarity and renewed love and appreciation for Jesus’ wounds and sacrifices. Over the last 5 years since I first began the healing process of learning to trust God again, while letting go of the idea that my goals equals God’s goals, the grief has stopped making me feel angry. I am capable of seeing the pain through the lens of the cross. God has truly given me the peace that Jesus speaks to in my quote, and that so long ago I could not fully understand. I have now experienced crushing, heart-wrenching pain in this world, but because of it I am more hopeful, and more grateful that Jesus has overcome this world, and that one day every pain will be undone, every tear will be wiped away, and we will experience happiness as it is meant to be known.