A Curious Collection of the Musings of One Jeremy Wise

I haven’t written anything recently about what I’m learning through Dad’s death. There’s been plenty of thinking, and I captured a lot of it in an email I sent out recently. Here are more of my thoughts… may they strengthen you somehow.

This is something I’ve talked to my wife about some, but I’ve got feelings I’m almost scared to admit I have. The most painful part of this process was that it shattered my trust in God. Certainly not that I’m abandoning my faith or anything, but more of a stunned silence followed by, “Um, why, God? I thought for sure you were going to do this, but you wound up doing that. This doesn’t make sense anymore.”

That’s probably really confusing… More specifically, I went into Dad’s illness with many preconceptions about prayer. That if we pray fervently enough, those prayers will have some influence on God’s plans. Like Moses reasoning with the Lord to not wipe out all of Israel in the desert. So I prayed.. hours and hours and hours… night after night after night. I prayed, convincing myself that God would eventually pull Dad through, and that Dad’s health would be restored. I was so convinced of that, I thought all this talk about having a will in place and getting ready to say goodbye were foolish talk. I thought I was the one with faith and everyone around me had given up. God was going to come through, and everyone was going to praise Him for His miraculous work.

And boom… Suddenly I had to reconcile my beliefs about prayer with the finality of death and the total lack of healing. I can, in my head, go Calvinistic, and say that “God had His will, and it was going to play out that way no matter what.” Which is acceptable, except that in this mindset, prayer is not a tool worth anything, because if God’s decision aligns with our request, then it will happen anyway, and if His decision aligns against our request, then no amount of petitioning will ever sway His decision. This, though, turns God into a universal Force, directing life like a script. He seems much more personal in Scripture, and more considerate of His peoples’ requests. But, then, in saying “He may grant this request, and not that request,” it seems that He becomes a quarter — we flip Him every time we pray.. heads, we win, tails we lose. And all we can do is stare at the result and go on.

Christian answers flood my mind — I have them all! “You just don’t understand everything like God does.” .. “You didn’t pray hard enough.. or maybe you should have fasted regularly.” .. “It will all work out in the end.” .. “What sin have you committed that God would refuse your prayers?” All these answers seem rubbish, a very small pile of it no less, when put next to the betrayal I’ve felt. The bottom line is that I thought I was serving God, and I thought He was going to bring healing, and in the end, my understanding was somewhere, somehow, flawed.

C.S. Lewis put it so perfectly in “A Grief Observed”. He said that he built his faith up, and in one fell swoop, God knocked it down, revealing it just to be a house of cards. We can get up and walk away, or we can go about building it again, foolishly thinking it won’t be knocked down by the next blow God unleashes. He also said well that he’s not afraid in believing that there is no God, but that he’s scared of the God in which he may find himself believing — that he’ll start to think of God as a cruel, wicked God, and we are merely His puppets and entertainment.

Yes, there are a ton of thoughts. Perhaps it’s a curse that I have two hours every day while driving to think these things through. I’m convinced, though, in the end, that my search for Truth will lead me exactly where I want it to… back to our Lord. I’m sure it was necessary that I be taken through these dark areas. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that these doubts and fears aren’t creeping up on my heart, but that they’ve always been hidden there, and only now are being brought under the Light… kicking and screaming the whole way. I find a great deal of hope in that, because I know then that the Spirit is hard at work, cleaning great evils from me that must be removed.

I certainly must conclude that God does know what He’s doing, and that He does ALWAYS work to establish His Righteousness and to redeem His Creation. It should be no shock to me that my heart suddenly yields these wicked thoughts. Any man who sets out to be freed from sin must certainly undergo great times of pain as that sin is ripped from his core. I remain convinced that when this is all said and done, I will not have less faith than I did before it began, but far greater faith. My house of cards, so to speak, will be a shining tower. But until then, the Great Physician goes on His painful work, showing no mercy while there is work to be done.

Wow… I feel like I just wrote a book… I’ll title it, “Another Grief Observed” :-) I hope I haven’t scared you with all this… All I have right now is the truth. My feelings come, whether I’m proud of them or not. Most people paint smiles on their faces and keep going like life is still all peachy. But what relief is there in that? Aren’t we instead called to lay our sins out in the Light and be healed? I think God’s just brought out my doubts so they may now be dealt with permanently. I guess we’ll learn that as we go.

There’s no anger there. I think there was to begin with, but it’s subsided now and I’m left just trying to make sense of everything. I’ve stopped screaming and gone back to listening.. waiting… watching. It’s easy to say, “Of course God’s greater than us, and knows more, and understands more thoroughly!” But when we’re really pressed, it becomes rather apparent that we still think we control our own lives, and God can have control when we give it to Him. I’m sure I’ll come out of this with much more humility as well, and a much better respect for “where I stand”. Surely God knows better than anyone how to teach us Truth, so long as we’re willing to endure the journey.

The following was my side of a discussion with a friend, who encouraged me to post these thoughts. So, for what they’re worth, here are my thoughts… on a suitably titled web site :-)

This whole deal with Dad has certainly presented the most stress I’ve ever had on my faith. It’s been good for putting things back in perspective. The most pressing question now is “God promises to answer prayers.. and we have not because we ask not.. and these are the promises we put our hope in.. and we put them to the test in asking Him to heal Dad… He doesn’t do it. Therefore, what makes us think that He’ll come through in His promise to redeem us from sin?” And the “christian” answer is “God always answers… sometimes we just don’t understand,” to which I would reply, “True enough. Maybe I just don’t understand prayer. I can accept that. But that also means that there’s a good chance I don’t understand salvation either! Either way, my hope could fall on an empty promise.”

I’m learning though that every time we go through a trial, a bit of our faith is shattered. We need to reconstruct our beliefs, each time taking into account what we’ve just learned. The bigger the tragedy, the more faith that’s shattered. But at the same time, i’m convinced that each time we put things together again, our faith is more resiliant, more thorough, more Truth. And with that view, we can only assume that God’s goal is not our comfort, but in destroying our false ideas and replacing them with Truth, and only then will we even be capable of seeing God .. as He really is.

In reading A Grief Observed, Lewis nails it. He says that God blew away his “house of cards” he called faith, and he wondered if his setting back to building his house is just a setup for a vindictive God to blow it down again later.

Back to the topic of death… If what we believe is correct, God designed us to be his two creations, combined… He took flesh of animals and glued it together with Spirit — His image. Death, then, is the most horrific thing in the picture! We are split in half; our body and soul are torn apart. We aren’t, at that point, even a sinful creature. We are two halves. And for a moment, I think I understand how a loving God would stop at nothing to put the pieces back together again. He himself is torn in two, separated not only flesh from spirit, but father from son! And then the most wonderful thing — sin lies dead on the floor like a beaten rat.

There is no doctrine in this story. It’s pure emotion. Love stands over “sin defeated” and offers us life as it was meant to be. What fellowship, then, do we have anymore with sin? With darkness? We can no more love sin than that dead smelly rat. And what really kills me is that these are the thoughts banging around in my head. And if I talk to anyone about this stuff (excluding Naomi, perhaps), they just look at me like i’m crazy… and they go back to their comfortable TV shows.

Just before Dad passed away, I had the idea to read a book off of my shelf which I had, to present, not read. The book is CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed. I was somewhat in hopes of finding some comfort from an intellectual who had been through the difficult process of watching a loved one die, and in fact, there were several passages with which I could quite relate.

“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.”

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”

These two quotes are more on the “dark side” of grief, albeit feeings that I’ve had through the process. Lewis goes on to explain how God seems to destroy our faith and beliefs just like a house of cards that we’ve constructed. Hope, then, must lie in Scripture’s assurance that this “destruction” is necessary so that we may have a more honest faith built up — perhaps my image of God was faulty in some way (most likely in many ways) and His concern is not in my comfort, but in my receiving a truer understanding of who He is.

More on this great book later :-)

I found out that the funeral home posts the obituary not only in the local paper, but on the web, too. So here is Dad’s first, last, and only ever… website.

Well, as several of you already know, Dad lost his long battle with cancer yesterday afternoon. It’s been a tough several weeks watching the struggle, and as hard as its been, it’s good to know it’s over. Dad was an incredible man, though I do wish to goodness we’d have a few more years to share life.

I’ve always had dreams… dreams of early morning fishing trips, of going golfing on summer afternoons, and of putting furniture together in my nice new garage. I had hopes of laughing over Cribbage games or joking over a cup of coffee and donuts. Lord willing, someday those dreams will all become vivid reality. But for now, death has become a separation, and we must spend the next few years growing without one another.

Dad left quite the legacy in his place. He was certainly the most patient man I have ever known. Even in the last few years, timeliness was never more important than people.

We have enjoyed so many times together! Dad taught me to fish. I can still remember that morning… a cane pole and a box of worms. I caught a dozen Crappies and he caught nothing. He gave me a love for computers. His excitement with them was so contagious. He got me hooked on electronics, on model rockets, and anything else one might tinker with in spare time. Dad taught me to play Euchre, Cribbage, and a host of other games.

I will never forget those late night trips to McDonald’s, when we’d get two extra hamburgers but never told Mom! He got me hooked onto chocolate malts, and I’ll never go back to shakes again :) I’ll never forget the late night “garbage runs” when we had to take loads of trash up to the dumpster. I do wish I’d appreciated them more at the time… but isn’t hindsight always 20/20?

This last year was trying. We did manage one trip to the driving range, but we never made it back to the golf course. I will always treasure the fact that Dad went with me on the road trip to Maine last summer. I hope he somehow knows how much it meant to have him along — I should’ve told him, I suppose. I’m so thankful that he was there at my wedding. I know I made him proud, but with a wife like mine, I couldn’t help it :)

The one thing I wish I’d had a chance to tell him was that he was always my hero. Growing up, I was scared that because he played football and wrestled in high school, that he’d be disappointed that I didn’t. But he never was. He was always the one encouraging me down whatever road I went. He loved my love for math, and for science, and for computers. Though he never told me he was proud, it was always obvious by his grin and his inquisitions. Too many times I grew frustrated with one thing or another, but he was always the first to tell me to treasure even the little things, lest they slip away before you know it. How true that is, and how well I know it now.

Most importantly, Dad taught me to be a man of God. In every way he modeled it, and in every way he encouraged godliness. He was an eternal optimist, an incredible husband, and a flawless father. I hope now that my tribute to him will be a life continued in his footsteps. If I am half the husband he was, half the father he’s been, and half the man of God, then my life will leave a legacy half as huge as his, and I will be content. You’ll always be my hero, Dad, and I’m so looking forward to seeing you again.