My Father, My Brother, My Friend

   

   As a little girl I vividly remember so many aspects of my young life but sadly, much of what I recall is not a recollection of happy times. To make a long story short, I was conceived out of wedlock, and into a marriage that would probably never had taken place if not for my untimely arrival. In retrospect, it seems that for most of my childhood I was assigned the burden bearer of my parents “monumental” mistake. I felt like the personification of their shame for the whole world to see.

   As time went on my parents were graced with two more children in their young lives and one more in their later years, but for now, I was the oldest of three. Although bitterness, anger, and shame were still at the central core of the life of our family, there were elements of fun and delight that would overshadow the general malaise of our broken system, but sadly those times were often short-lived. I remember, one Memorial Day weekend that was of particular fun picnicking and building a tree fort out of scrap wood that we scavenged out of the woods next to our house. This was one day, out of too few, I truly recollect as having been filled with the fun and fullness of childhood ingenuity.  But by the next day, the reality of my life’s circumstance would once again rear its ugly head in the tragedy of a fatal car accident that would take my four-year-old brother’s young life and forever mar the already brutal family system we had all grown to complacently accept.

   My Father’s anger turned to rage and the unspoken rule became never to acknowledge the deep sadness of my loss to my mom; or anyone else, for fear of unleashing something so deep as to never be able to contain it again. My mom slipped into chronic depression and my dad became more violent than he’d even been before, but as for me, I kept silent. The only acknowledgment of my loss I’d ever expressed, was when I was alone, in the still small place of the Spirit, confessions of fear, anguish, and heartbreak only to be shared with Jesus, my one true friend. After all, there was no one who’d experienced more trauma and betrayal than him. Although I intimately understood the sufferings of Christ at a young age, what I did not understand in my childlike perceptions was Christ’s ultimate victory. Inevitably, over the years, as young friendships sometimes go, my love for him grew tired and cold. Until that fateful day of reckoning.

   Years later, I found myself in college fully convinced that I could be my own fulfillment. That with enough study and hard work I could beat the legacy of my former self, I could achieve acceptance through enlightenment!  Fortunately for me, in the midst of an “intellectual” discussion on reincarnation between my Philosophy Professor and I, the emboldened Christian lady who was seated next to me decided to shed a little bit of enlightenment into the discussion herself. And in that evening, she would set the stage for a new kind of understanding within me that only grace could afford. She had professed to have seen the Living Christ at the foot of her bed one night. And my response was that of a simple but heartfelt prayer which went something like this, “ If you show yourself to me like that, then by the Spirit of Truth, I will believe you “. 

    A few weeks later I would literally be in for the ride of my life in a near miss collision that forever changed and may have even ended the lives of two strangers I just happened to be driving between on Interstate 78. Somehow I had been miraculously delivered out of the way of the stalled car in front of me and the speeding car behind me, that in a split second would end up in a gruesome collision with one another, but somehow minus me. I could at the time, and still now, can only attribute that near miss to being an act of Godly intervention. I walked away, thinking “why me?” And the only conclusion I could come up with was that it was a providential wake-up call and God wasn’t finished with me yet.

   Needless to say, a few weeks later, the God I had denied for so many years would take me on yet another journey of loss, but this time it would be eclipsed by life and filled with glimmers of hope. A kind of hope that could only be orchestrated by One who stands outside of time and human reason, a kind brilliantly and graciously orchestrated in a way that could only be explained in Spirit of Truth Himself. In the next few weeks, I would go on to yet again experience another devastating loss. The life of my most precious friend Debbie would be taken in another car accident.

   You see, my good friend had made me privy to a dream her mother had, and in it, God cast a vision of her impending death and a need for spiritual preparation. These amongst other thoughts and concerns she’d made known to me; right before the tragic breakdown, which indeed did end her life. But in all of this, she had not been abandoned unto death. Instead, she was graciously provided for; left in the hands of a good Samaritan and a priest of whom I had just recently met, and had the good pleasure of being ministered to a few weeks before at my sister’s wedding.  Most importantly though, Debbie had not been abandoned by God, but he had prepared the way; a way into a new place, a place of tender reconciliation. And it was not just Debbie who’d be reconciled unto death in Christ that week, but me as well. Life begotten through death and death through life, came to a full crescendo at the funeral of my friend that week. God had revealed his majesty over creation to me and had breathed life into that which was otherwise dead.

   No longer subject to the limited understanding my experiences had afforded me as a child, my sufferings were now redeemed. Perceptions of mutual weakness and loss were magnified in His power and glory which screamed victory over death. His presence and His life were made manifest to me and in me through the death of another so near and dear. The stuff that had influenced my short sighted view on matters of life and death, pain, and suffering at the hands of an unkind life and unkind father, had now been reconciled unto Christ’s death, through the lives of my Father, my Brother, and my Friend.