My God is a Rock in a Weary Land

God protected Nathan and me from a car accident on Thursday. We narrowly escaped harm, literally by inches. A woman pulled slowly out in front of us on our way home from an appointment, and as Nathan drove around her on the left, she turned left from the right lane of the one-way street. Thankfully he was paying attention and quickly turned into the same parking lot where she was turning. She didn’t hit us, barely.  I thanked God so much because we had just spent $2,700 repairing our vehicle about two weeks ago, and because we don’t need any more headaches right now.  Nathan handled the situation a lot more graciously than I probably would have if I had been behind the wheel.  He got out at the same time the woman did, and as she was inspecting her car, he said, “I didn’t hit you, did I?” She said bewildered, “No, I don’t think so.” As he got back in our car, he called to her, “You don’t turn across two lanes of traffic on a one-way, lady.” I would have said a few more choice words.

I’m thankful for God’s healing of my physical body, too. Yesterday my wound was still open, and this morning when I checked it, it looked all closed.  How appropriate for the celebration of Palm Sunday.  I was definitely celebrating that healing this morning.  Part of me knows that most people will stop asking how I am now that my wound is healed.  Only one or two friends have dared to ask me how I really am lately, and the rest have been asking about my physical wound – the safe question to ask.  So now that it is healed, they will just not ask.  I hope people know that just because I look like I’m “feeling fine,” as a friend at church commented this morning since I was all dressed up with makeup and a smile on my face, does not mean that I am fine.  It will take me a very long time to actually be well again.  Although the physical wound has taken almost 4 months (110 days, to be exact) to heal, I think it will easily take at least 10 times that for me to feel emotionally healed from everything I’ve gone through in the past 4 years – the death of 3 of my 4 children, 4 surgeries, my husband’s back pain and surgery, poverty, job loss, a sick child in the NICU, my father’s illness, etc. This is what the “experts” call “complicated grief,” with multiple losses complicating one another.

And yet society expects me to look fine and act fine. They expect me to work, earn money, and pay my bills. They expect me to put on my happy face for Palm Sunday, and keep my contemplative face for Good Friday, and put my happy face back on for Easter Sunday. They expect me to keep my child from screaming in a restaurant. They expect me not to scream in the grocery store. With my performance and people-pleasing background, I am usually very adept at conforming to these societal expectations, but I wish there was a way to communicate to everyone (not just the few who still read this blog) that I am not OK and I still need support, despite my appearance of normality. I still need hugs. I still need people to understand when I forget their name or a story they’ve told me already. I still need people to talk about my baby girl, my beautiful, sweet girl.

Today in church I sang a solo for the first time since last November, before Hannah was born.  She bounced around in my tummy as I sang the song, and I remember not being able to breathe very well because of that.  I was about 37 weeks pregnant at the time. Today I wasn’t able to breathe, either, but that was because I haven’t really sung for 5 months, and because I was nervous and trying to not cry so that I could sing. The song I sang was called Rest and was written by a friend of mine from Wheaton College named Carolyn Broughton, who gave me permission to perform it for church.  She prayed that I would be able to sing without crying, since that was my prayer, and God answered.  Somehow I made it through the song without crying, despite looking around the room and seeing more than one person crying while I sang.  It wasn’t the prettiest my voice has ever sounded due to allergies and some vocal fatigue, but I hope the song still ministered to the people who heard it.

Nathan brought Adelaide back into the sanctuary after the sermon so that she could hear my solo, and she waved at me up in the choir loft and started to walk toward me, but thankfully he rerouted her before it was an issue.  My baby girl is not so much a baby anymore.  Here’s a picture of her frantically waving her palm branch as Nathan tried to take her picture. It’s the only one he was able to get. The choir members joked that we should all wave our branches like that, too. 🙂

The song that comes to my mind today is My God is a Rock in a Weary Land, a spiritual chorally arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw.  I’ve sung it with the Wheaton College Concert Choir and the Topeka Festival Singers. God protects me from the winds that howl around me. He provides shelter and a place to rest my feet on the journey.  Thank you, God, for being my rock in this weary land.  What is your weary land? How have you seen God be your rock?