The first one occurred in college my freshman semester, when the thought "if God can see this and call it 'good,' then He doesn't know what 'good' is" shook me to the very core. The problem of pain is hardly new or original, so I'm not going to devote this blog post to solving it. Suffice it to say, during my senior year, I took a certain hobbit-honored approach to it.
There's good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
Or, as CS Lewis would put it, "the presence of Good in this world is a greater mystery than the presence of Evil." If I remember my philosophical history correctly, that line of argument traces back to Augustine at least.
If nature's red in tooth and claw, where does good come from?
The second time around was considerably harder. The solution to the first had depended heavily on the friendships I made my last two years of college. These people are good, therefore, God exists and loves me. It was a bit more complicated than that one sentence makes it sound, but, the point is, when those relationships became challenged and troubled, it had an impact everywhere else.
Remove the foundation, and the building crumbles.
The thought that drove the second crisis was "everyone who has ever hurt me has claimed Christ as their Lord." Again, that's a classic objection to the faith and it's been covered elsewhere and in better measure than I can cover it here. Nevertheless, this is my journey and it's where I'm at presently.
I live in a house with three other women. One of whom, Roommate Laughter, is someone I've roomed with previously. We've been through a lot together, we take evening walks together, we get in pillow fights, and, when she needed a driver for an appointment, I went with her and made her laugh despite her nervousness. The second, Roommate Bigroom, isn't someone I see often, but we get along great when we do.
The third, Roommate Upstairs, has been having a lot of trouble adjusting to life in the beltway. It makes me think of my own adjustment to NOVA, when I came out here that second time.
That was not an easy transition. After three years of dreaming, I finally started scheming. Took time off all volunteer projects to be sure that my vacation time went to job interview trips. Mom took it as a personal insult that I wanted to leave Michigan, so I had to find ways to stay out of the house and as far from her as possible until I finally got out here. Even then, I wasn't sure she'd actually help me by bringing the furniture and I was on pins and needles until it finally happened.
When I did get out here, even with my furniture, that didn't mean my troubles were over. Far from it. Two of my friends started fighting. My worst nightmare started emailing me. I recovered a horrific memory of a near-death experience and had to start months of physical therapy to repair the years of untreated damage that had caused on my back. Because of the pain in the treatment and the terror in the memory, my relationship with my supervisor deteriorated and I lost my job.
Especially at that point, with my hope completely gone and the terror and the pain continuing, my interviewing skills were practically nonexistent. I took every single opportunity that came my way, eventually racking up contracts with six different temp agencies. The sixth one offered me a month-long job that was never supposed to become long-term, but, because the managers were impressed with my work ethic and enthusiasm, they offered me the chance to interview for a real job. To this day, they have never yet hired any other admin temp, but I doubt they'd have given me a second look if I'd interviewed in the regular way.
By all rights, I never should have made it out of that. My savings, my health, and my peace of mind were all shot to hell. Somehow, though, I never missed a rent payment. There were days when my meals were candy from a Christmas tin my grandma sent me, but I never missed a rent payment. A friend offered me a great gift. My sister sent me a check. My grandparents sent what they could. People who cared about me, who just wanted to give me a chance. All I needed was a chance.
Folks have often told me that I live too much in the past. Well, I've got a lot of it, and it often happens to give good advice about what I need to be doing in the present. Like, for example, acknowledging the "everyone who has ever hurt me has claimed Christ as their Lord" line is a half-truth whispered in my ear by the devil. It overlooks the most important truths.
I've been turning over these memories in my mind for a while and, when I went to church this weekend, I was able to worship again the way that I used to - from a sincere heart and with abandon. I even sat through the sermon in the sanctuary, which hasn't happened for a while.
Pastor Jim Supp preached from the passage in Acts about the unity and generosity of the early church. Both portions were convicting. In the part on unity, he told the church that, if there were people there who had left another church because of unresolved conflict, they should go back, resolve the conflict, and then make their decision about where they needed to be long-term. You can't invest with joy if you're infested with resentment. The other part, the part on generosity, well... one wonders what a person can do if they're pointed in the right direction and given a chance.
Hard lines and goal points are important, but they don't connect well without a tangible measure of love. One can't live without that.
Roommate Laughter and I did some work on the living room. I love our new coffee table that Laughter found, and the Enterprise poster that I finally got framed. It's starting to look like a real home, now, although there's still a long way to go.
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