I have abandoned and taken up this page several times. Most of the times I stop writing because I feel like I don’t have anything truly relevant to say, and that few people seem to be getting anything out of it anyway. But I have come back with a much more selfish purpose and one that will probably deviate from the light, inspirational focus with which this blog was created.

These last three years have been a whirlwind. I am not in a cheerful or change the world kind of place. Quite honestly, my faith is shaken. Here I am again, not for you, but for me. Maybe writing will be the only way to bear myself back up, to find my way forward in this broken faith. It doesn’t much matter to me who reads this, although if you do, I hope you will find an honesty of human spirit that speaks to your own. For we are all alone, we all battle, and we seldom hear anyone speak of it frankly.

I am a mother. This sentence has become one of the most powerful things I could write, both because of the throes of magnificence it has shone down into my life and the incredible pain. There are so many things I could get into that I’m not even sure what exactly the focus of this first post will be. I started with my faith, so let’s continue down this path.

My time as a mother has been the time when I have had the most prayers go unanswered, ignored. I held onto the scrap of faith within me, persisting for a while, but in the last year, I have felt so worn down that though not completely gone, it is a small bubble floating on the surface of a sea of doubt. I feel abandoned and alone. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one whose gone through a moment like this, though just try to get the vast majority of “Christians” to admit it.

Or to admit that sometimes, in moments like these, you get angry at God. You want to rage and flip him off for not giving you one tiny break in all the chaos (and sometimes you do). It is, as C.S. Lewis puts it in A Grief Observed, “the only pleasure a man in anguish can get; the pleasure of hitting back”.

Boy do I feel like hitting back sometimes. The rational part of me could, of course, quickly show the absurdity of that: the insignificance of my suffering in a world filled with it, the joys and blessings that I do have despite the hard times, the transient nature of it all. But who cares what the rational part of me says? That’s not how I feel. For too long I have battled the emotional part of my being, filled with voices in my head saying that I should not feel this way or that, that I needed to get over these negative emotions as quickly as possible, to put on a smile and brave the bad weather because that’s what strong, brave, moral people do. I want to call bullshit on all of these attitudes. You don’t need to do any of that crap. You need to accept the anger and the sadness, the fear and all of it and let it out. Let it out so it can’t fester and drain you. Let it out so that you can be YOU completely without shame. Feelings are a part of our humanity; I keep coming back to that moment on the cross when Jesus cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” No one told him he shouldn’t talk like that, he shouldn’t feel that way.

If Jesus is allowed to have moments of despair, anguish and feelings of abandonment, I certainly am too. I don’t need you to tell me that everything happens for a reason or that God has a plan. I don’t care in that moment of pain. Do you think Jesus didn’t know God’s plan? Yet there he is, crying out in his feeling of solitude. Why are we so afraid of emotion and pain? After all, it’s universal; we all go through it. You’d think we would have gotten better at dealing with it. But I have cleared rooms when I have allowed the true vulnerability and anguish through; suddenly, everyone had to be on their way.

But I have had a couple of encounters with true Christians. People who aren’t afraid of the messy, scary emotions. People who are totally ok if you say you are pissed at God or feel abandoned. People who say well, of course you are and suddenly make you feel seen and a little less alone. People who are there to listen and hug you once you want to be hugged again. People who show you that maybe, just maybe there’s a faint glimmer of hope out there. People who in their love and acceptance actually embody the values they say they represent. But they are not the majority. Probably because we are all so afraid to show just how weak and hurt and not put together we are. The longer I live, the more I see the mistakes I’ve made in the past. I don’t know that I’ve always listened to others the way I should have. Perhaps I have always been too eager to try and make them feel better. I feel ashamed of that now. At least now I know better, and I hope that will make me act better.

It’s far from simple, and it is a habit that is very difficult to break.  It becomes so automatic you hardly notice until someone else points it out or someone helps you become self-aware. Our adult self seems to be in protective mother mode, always looking out for the little child within us.  Except, as we are human, sometimes our over-protectiveness is destructive. It jumps to an illogical level where we are protecting ourselves from good. To find where this obstacle lies in our psyche is challenging; the protective mechanism seems to erect a solid wall that weakens slowly, almost imperceptibly. This can make the task seem impossible.

Because of all this, I understand how difficult it can be for some people to accept God’s love. If you feel unworthy or have always avoided acceptance of love for whatever reason, how can you emotionally contemplate that God has an everlasting, unshakeable, powerful love for you? How overwhelming to allow yourself to be loved on such a profound level! But maybe if we open ourselves just a crack to this love, it can be the beginning of the effort to bring down that wall, to free ourselves from our own fears and limitations, and understand what it really means to love ourselves and others like ourselves. I’m not there yet. But I’m working on it.

In the end, two symbols that I thought were unrelated, were closely related and have made me reflect a lot. Now, the dream could be merely a reflection of my psychological state; a truth about myself, my desires, my needs manifested in my brain’s efforts to process my thoughts and emotions. But there is also a long tradition of God speaking through dreams.  In either case, it doesn’t much matter. What matters is the message. Where is home? I couldn’t answer, but when I sought the truth, the “address” was Jesus. No matter how agitated or suffocated or despondent I feel, I know that home lies with Him.

Keeping that true north may be the only thing that will keep me sane at such a difficult time. I’m trying to get home Jesus, but I get lost a lot. I am trying to keep my eyes on home, but Lord, sometimes, I am so tired all I want is to close them and give up. It is getting more difficult as April begins that we enter the time when our boys should have come into the world … the natural end of the pregnancy.  Around now would be the time we would meet them and hold them for the first time, we would proudly show them off to all our loved ones, and take them into our home.  The weight increases as these first weeks approach and arrive. And all I can pray is for strength and mercy, and the rest cries out to God with no words at all.

We are each so unique; we react and process things in different ways, and no two people can have the exact same experience.  And yet, I feel that I understand Charlotte Bronte’s grief…or is it that she understands mine? We had different experiences, and yet there are some images and sentiments here that reflect all too clearly my very own. What is so powerful about writing is that there is no shame. It is a complete honest reflection that unfortunately is not always present in our “real” day-to-day world. People don’t want to see grief; they want to “comfort” it away so that they don’t have to feel uncomfortable. This doesn’t make them insensitive or cruel people; it makes them human. Our instincts and culture have taught us to shy away from these things; it is common to hide anything that is not beautiful. That’s why most Facebook pages only show the beautiful, shiny moments of our life. That’s also why it is only when you endure a terrible tragedy that you begin to discover all the other people in your life that also had something of the genre happen to them.  It was like this with the dissolution of my first marriage.  Suddenly, people were sharing not only previous divorces I knew nothing about, but marital struggles that even the successful couples had gone through or continued to struggle with.  This time, I learned of all the miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature deliveries that led to death that I had no clue about before. I was amazed at how common these stories were because these things are never admitted beforehand. It seems to be a perverse club that you can only become privy to once you are well into your  own suffering. This has assured me that I know nothing about anyone else’s experience but my own.

Going back to Charlotte Bronte’s expression of grief for her sister, I am struck by her description of “failing breath” and “weary strife” which immediately evokes in my mind images of my own experience. But most of all, that second line that for her there is “little terror in the grave”. This too I understand acutely.  Contrary to fear, at times Death seems appealing. After all, it would bring me closer to those little souls, heart of my heart that were so soon separated from me.  Even my useless body would swirl together with theirs in that vast oceanic home. Don’t freak out. I’m not suicidal, nor do I need medication for depression.  I know that once we speak things like this our fears of these types of expressions lead us to this path.  Perhaps rightly so, as there are people who go so far down that hole that they need our attention and medical care to pull them out.  But let me reassure you with all honesty that this here is not one of those cases.  What I mean to say is that as you lose more and more loved ones to that inevitable end called death, it must become easier to let go of this life and join them. Should I have a child later on, perhaps my hold on life will become more persistent with the knowledge that I have a creature still so dependent upon me to care for. But for now, though I don’t necessarily wish to have my life taken away, it doesn’t seem as scary to confront my end. Perhaps this is a singular feeling unique to me and Charlotte (I will take the liberty seeing as we shared some aspects of such a profound experience to refer to her only by her first name), that somehow our experience and personality predisposed us to process our grief in this manner. But I suspect that if across the many decades difference, she and I were able to find this common sentiment, there are others out there. I am beginning to learn to embrace my grief, to welcome it into daily life, to accept it as a now permanent fixture that will mingle perpetually with all the other sentiments rolling around in me each day. I will be ashamed no more.

Now, as I see more clouds approaching on the horizon, there is a voice inside me that hoarsely whispers that there is no hope, no strength, no victory.  Surrender now and lose all joy. After all, there is always the possibility of more tragedy.  But that is not the only voice inside me.  The voices of all those narrations of stories that say, it will hurt, it will change you, but you will gain something in the end are also speaking. The love of family, friends, and my most trusted partner in love speak strongly. Jesus’s example of suffering and rising out of his love is also speaking. But most of all, lately, the voice of my two dead baby boys speaks to me of the impermanence of life. Their example stands out to me; despite its brevity, they too lived a full life. They had their suffering just to grasp that next gulp of air. But they held onto my finger too. They felt their heads against my chest, heard the voice of their father singing, heard the fervent declarations of love from their parents.  These were their moments of joy too. What an admirable way to lead life.

Therefore, I need to lead life like my boys.  I need to suffer, grieve, and accept the pain because there is no way around it.  But life is not only these things. Embrace the laughter, the love, the dreams, the hopes…do all the things you dream now; don’t postpone that special dinner, the meaningful trip, the completion of a project for life’s fragility may not allow another chance for it. There are endless cliche phrases that express it, and this message has been repeated so often, it has become meaningless. Yet, when we endure an unexpected tragedy, when we lose people that we love so completely, it becomes clear where these things had their origin.

Just don’t let anyone tell you that the good things will cancel out the suffering. That’s a lie. No future children will replace a child you have lost. No life changes that spring out of a tragedy will eliminate the wounds left on your heart from said tragedy. But they do coexist; the pain and the rebirth. By finding ways to renew yourself, you can keep from getting overwhelmed by the pain. By fueling your dreams with the sorrow, you can find moments of lightness and joy to coexist with the heavy darkness of agony. When we were in Portugal, my husband and I came across a ceramic artist whose work consisted of religious and traditional folk scenes. We thought her work was beautiful, and ended up buying a special piece. It was a crucifix with Jesus on the cross, except that his body was actually bunches of flowers spilling over the sides of the cross. The image to us was the perfect encapsulation of Jesus’s life. His suffering and death produced life, bloomed in a rebirth. So, I pray for the opportunities to find the blooms within my own life, not because they will lessen or take away the pain, but to find the new life within it, else I should perish. 

Science has a long held tradition of asking questions about the natural world and how it works. It asks, tests, and proves or disproves the processes around us. Religion probes spiritual questions mostly dealing with accountability and morality. Although at times these two things may approach each other, they are never really in the same realm. That’s why scientists claiming to have disproven God’s existence is ridiculous. And that’s why religious people who refuse to accept scientific evidence are equally ridiculous.

What I find incredibly interesting is that the notion of philosophy and science being “at war” has never really caught on.  Perhaps it is because we have always accepted that there is no way to prove one philosophy “right” or “wrong”, yet no one writes it off as being unnecessary to think about the questions it poses.  In the end, religion is much closer to philosophy than to science. But if I were to go on about how science had proven the end of philosophy or how I couldn’t believe in some scientific evidence because of a philosophy, people would think I was insane.  “What does one have to do with the other?”, they would ask. Exactly.

Just as philosophy delves into things like the concepts and definitions of truth, morality, meaning of life, and good vs evil, so does religion.  If it seems unnatural to pit philosophy against science, then perhaps we have been fighting a useless and irrelevant war all this time.  There are questions that are too abstract for science; that is why these other fields have emerged and remained all these years.

In fact, one emerging field that has appeared from this dissatisfaction with science by itself is philosophy of science. You may, as I did when I first saw it, be asking yourself, ” What in the world is philosophy of science? “. Well, as Janet Stemwedel explains in a blog post on Scientific American, “…philosophers of science have spent a good bit of time trying to find the line between science and non-science, trying to figure out the logic with which scientific claims are grounded, working to understand the relation between theory and empirical data, and working out the common thread that unites many disparate scientific fields — assuming such a common thread exists. *” The existence of this field underlines that science, for all of its unique and beneficial analysis, cannot answer all questions on its own. So, these scientists have leaned towards philosophy to try to answer certain questions. Likewise, certain philosophy questions can lean into theological debates and vice versa. So, the three have intimate relationships in that they are all driven by our feelings of curiosity and longing to understand life and the world. But does that mean that one can negate the other?

Science is driven by facts, or an aspiration for facts. We want testable results to prove our theories correct. Philosophy argues that while facts are also important to its field, there are questions which facts alone cannot answer. For these, we must think and pose new questions. But when contemplating questions such as Why does this world exist? or What is the meaning of life?, it is difficult to avoid theological questions.

Perhaps we will never have definitive answers to these inquiries, but that certainly doesn’t mean we should simply stop pursuing them. I’m not sure we could, given our human desire to question and comprehend. From the time we are children, we find ourselves asking our parents what and why, trying to figure out how this crazy world works.

So, why has this myth of science and religion being intrinsically opposed been perpetuated? After all, there are many scientists who hold religious beliefs and do their jobs admirably. And there are many theologians who also value and respect scientific conclusions and do their jobs admirably.

One possibility that leaps to mind is laziness. As much a part of human nature as curiosity, there are many people who don’t want the difficulty of having to think through larger questions. So these people decide to gulp down whatever ready made opinion feels best for them in the moment and fiercely oppose anyone who would even peripherally suggest something isn’t 110% the way they’ve accepted it to be. How dare you imply that science may not have all the answers! How dare you imply that my religious text may not be meant to be absolutely literal! However, I hate to be so negative.  I don’t want to believe that it is only laziness.  Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that some people are never taught to question and challenge their beliefs.  This seems much more likely, as then these people would be easier to manipulate by those whose interest it is to have them accept whatever they say.  That’s right; the people who perpetuate the myth about this imaginary war have some benefit to gain, most likely in power and wealth.  Do you think the extremists who perpetuate the same fear mongering in Islamic countries are doing anything differently? They are using the same language…that “they”, whoever they are, are trying to take away this thing you feel so passionate about. Join our side, and we’ll protect it. But really they mean,  “Join our side so we can receive power and control, and ultimately wealth. We care only marginally about this thing you care so much about.”  And because these topics deal with how we search for answers in life, these feelings reach far beyond passionate into zealous.

Politicians use these feelings to get re-elected and to ensure continued funding from the special interests who support them.  The media feeds off the extreme reactions and angry arguments to secure eyeballs and boost their ratings (and hence, their bottom line).  And certain extremist scientists and theologians use it for exposure, success, and control over their followers. All of these people fear a public who thinks and questions and searches for moderate answers.  And so they will continue to perpetuate the war…to show you the other side saying ridiculous things and attacking the thing that you love so much.  They will show you as often as possible until you think that those are the only people who exist outside of your “team”.  They will throw you carelessly into a war that doesn’t exist.  Hopefully, more and more of us will realize their game and refuse to fall for it.