tantrums

At school today a little girl was marched into my office.  Her eyes were red and her shoulders were shaking.  She listened defiantly as I talked about how kindergarten students can not throw screaming fits over the shape of crackers served during snack time.  She was not convinced.  Or very sorry.

Actually I felt for her.  I know that helpless, angry frustration that sometimes wells up inside me looking for a way to escape.

I felt it this month.  After years of praying a very specific prayer and years of silence from Heaven in response. After laying out over and over and over what seemed to me a God-honoring, mostly unselfish plea.  After trying to be positive and grateful and teachable in spite of not seeing a light at the end of my tunnel.

Recently in my car I listened to an inspiring sermon on Daniel's three friends facing the wrath of the king.  How these men of faith faced the angry king and told him to his face "Our God is able to deliver us from this furnace.  But even if He does not we will still serve Him to our death."  The point of the sermon was sometimes God delivers us FROM the fiery furnace.  And sometimes God delivers us IN the fiery furnace.  We don't always get the rescue, the answers, the solutions we want or need, but this doesn't have to shake our faith.

As if.  

I love my faith.  It's the air I breathe and the road I walk on.  It is guiding, helpful, comforting, delightful, interesting, challenging, grounded.  What it is not is Unshakable.

I falter in front of a furnace.  Or in pitch blackness.  Or dead quiet.  I need more burning bushes and wall writing and nets overflowing with fish.  I'd like a city falling down and seas parting please.

But no.  What started with a hope-crushing text last week, ended with me in the bath tub having a spiritual hissy fit.   I didn't renounce my religion or curse at God.  Just kicked and cried and pouted.  "God, what in the world is wrong with you?  How clear do I have to be?"

When I was still doing hospice full time I ordered Barbara Brown Taylor's new book Learning to Walk in the Dark.  I thought I would be good for my patients.  I pulled it out recently and found that what it is really good for is people in mid-tantrum.   This paragraph spoke to me.

This darkness and cloud is always between you and God, no matter what you do," wrote the anonymous fourteenth-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, "and it prevents you from seeing Him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason and from experiencing Him in sweetness of love in your affection.  So set yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can, always crying out after Him whom you love.  For if you are to experience Him or to see Him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness."

I climbed out of the tub, spent and resigned.  Red eyes and shaky shoulders.  So be it cloud and darkness.

And then the next day.  The next day! Things dramatically changed.  Better than I could have scripted or hoped for. Steve was offered a new job.  With people that valued his years of commitment and consistency.  People who said things like "Wow, we are so excited to get to work with you." With plenty of stable work, affirming staff and new challenges.   The desires of my heart.  What feels like the warm smiles of God.

And with my joy and gratitude comes sheepishness.  Why couldn't I have held that tantrum off twenty four hours? Why couldn't I have embraced one more night of the darkness and announced "Even if He does not!" Why such a vivid reminder that my faith is sometimes still in kindergarten?

There will be other cloudy nights and long tunnels.  I know that. What I hope is that I can carry this experience and so many others through the darkness.  That I will remember there is a fourth being holding my hand in the furnace.  That instead of yelling at I can cry out after Him whom I love.

And maybe a little less pouting and kicking.....