Hold On ...

"It hurts, Ame.  It hurts so much."  These are the last words I heard from my grandfather, who truth be told, I wasn't overly close with.  I loved him, and he loved me, no question, but we didn't have a relationship where we were particularly close.  I was in high school, and our whole extended family had gathered at his home as he was in the final stages of cancer.  I sat beside his bed when it was my turn to visit with him, and sang him a few songs.  Then he said those words, and I in my youth didn't know what to do or say, so I mumbled something vaguely loving, might have touched his hand in an attempt to comfort, and then found my way out of the room so I could be replaced by someone wiser.

Many of us have challenging relationships with death, and experiences which shape the level of fear and pain surrounding it for us.  That relationship is different for everyone, but one thing that's constant is that we who are living have all nonetheless interacted with death in some capacity.

There's a certain segment of people of faith who imply that if someone merely trusts in God, they no longer fear death.  Well, that's simply not true.  Perhaps that's the ideal, a mindset to work toward, but even the faithful of the Bible found death hard to reconcile.  Jesus himself had concerns about facing the experience of dying.  Recognizing that death is a painful and difficult part of human existence isn't contrary to trusting God at all.

In the days after my grandfather's death, as I replayed those words he'd said to me on repeat in my mind, the first lines of Sarah McLachlan's song "Hold On" caught me in a new way:

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"Hold on, hold on to yourself.  For this is gonna hurt like hell."

Sarah McLachlan said in an interview that she wrote this song after seeing a documentary about a woman whose husband contracted HIV.  "[I]t was a great and tragic love story. She took care of him up until he died and her passion, empathy and strength was inspirational."

God Remix has spent the month of January exploring lament, which in the Bible often takes a specific form.  First, a complaint describing suffering; then, a request for help; finally, a resolution of some sort, frequently a reminder of something to praise.  This form is a great example for our own laments - sitting in the pain, yes, but eventually moving to identifying what we want God to do in response, and reminding ourselves of something comforting to cling to in the meantime.  "Hold On" loosely follows a similar format.

Suffering:

"Hold on, hold on to yourself

For this is gonna hurt like hell

Hold on, hold on to yourself

You know that only time will tell

What is it in me that refuses to believe?

This isn't easier than the real thing"

Request:

"Oh God, if you're out there won't you hear me?

I know that we've never talked before

Oh God, the man I love is leaving

Won't you take him, when he comes to your door?"

Praise:

"Now you're sleeping peaceful, I lie awake and pray

That you'll be strong tomorrow and will see another day

And we will praise it

And love the light that brings a smile

Across your face"

The 'well-adjusted' faithful who worry that wrestling with death will pull people from God aren't entirely wrong - grief can indeed drive us further from faith.  But it can also draw us closer.  In my own grief, I put this song on repeat to replace the voices in my head.  I sat in the suffering.  I cried out pleas to a God I wasn't sure was listening.  And over time, the comfort of that sunlight at the end of the song snuck itself into my heart in spite of myself, and made a home next door to the doubt and uncertainty.  Real life faith has to deal with real life, and the inescapable reality is, sometimes it hurts like hell.