CHAPTER 4
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night.
—Psalm 42:1–3
Here’s the problem with having had a really easy time of it growing up: when you do finally experience tragedy, as we all inevitably do, you are totally unprepared for it.
I’d been raised in a loving home by two generous and compassionate parents. I’d had a big sister who looked out for me and a community of friends who supported me. We’d never been rich, but there was always food on the table and a roof over our heads. I’d been fortunate enough to pursue higher education. I’d had an amazing experience living abroad in India after college and found a job I loved as a social worker shortly after my arrival home. I’d married a kind man who worked hard, laughed easily, and never kept a record of any wrong I’d committed against him. I was good at my religion, admired for my character, and well situated in my social surroundings. I was healthy, privileged, and secure. I was in control of my life.
Kate Bowler is one of the world’s premier scholars of the theology and practice of the prosperity gospel movement in America. Bowler was diagnosed with stage four cancer at the age of thirty-five. As she processed both her experience of studying the health and wealth gospel and her own personal encounter with suffering and mortality, she wrote:
I would love to report that what I found in the prosperity gospel was something so foreign and terrible to me that I was warned away, but what I discovered was both familiar and painfully sweet: the promise that I could curate my life, minimize my losses, and stand on my successes. And no matter how many times I rolled my eyes at the creed’s outrageous certainties, I craved them just the same. I had my own Prosperity Gospel, a flowering weed grown in with all the rest.1
When Tim and I began to struggle with infertility, I assumed it was a blip on the radar. My well-ordered, finely tuned life must have simply short-circuited for a moment. Surely it wouldn’t be long before things got back on track and life went back to normal. Back to good. God was testing us. Or teaching us. No doubt, we would patiently and righteously endure, and He would reward us with a baby in time. Our good choices and positive thinking combined with God’s good graces would right the ship. God may not be in the business of prosperity, but He is in the business of happiness, right?
Sure enough, I found out I was pregnant after a couple of years of struggling and a few doctors’ consultations. Back on track. Back to good.
And then, the baby died.
That may have been the moment when I realized that just because your life has been easy up to a point doesn’t mean it will continue in the same manner. It was then that I realized that the gospel may not always result in the emotional and experiential prosperity I had come to expect, and that God didn’t always behave in the way I thought He should. God had disappointed me—not in the rainy Saturday or middle school breakup kind of way. He had disappointed me in the soul-crushing, life-altering kind of way.
Even then, I had no idea what was coming, that there were more miscarriages in the future and that I was going to lose my only sister. In many ways, I’d been a bystander to tragedy for many years, having lived in an Indian orphanage after college and then serving as a social worker and international disaster responder later. I’d always felt like I lived in the suburbs of other people’s trauma, so I fancied myself cognizant and well prepared for loss. When I found myself at the epicenter of my own tragedy, I realized I was completely inept.
The language of the American evangelical church had informed many of my assumptions about suffering. Church people have a way of approaching hardship with an air of pretense and a load of half-truths that don’t get you very far when you are in the throes of bereavement: Everything happens for a reason, right? God won’t give you more than you can handle, right? Just pray, and that peace that passes all understanding will wash over your body from head to toe, right? The presence of God will descend upon you like a dove from heaven, right?
The problem was, that peace and that presence sure didn’t feel like I thought it would.
I had assumed up until recently that peace was primarily a feeling, and a pleasant one at that—comforting, gratifying, reassuring. I had also assumed that the feeling of God’s presence would be much the same. In my mind, God’s presence was supposed to be, if anything, affable. I’m now learning, thanks to the work and writings of folks like Lisa Sharon Harper, that the biblical understanding of peace (shalom) has less to do with feelings and more to do with a state of being. It’s about rightness, correct action within relationships, and wholeness.2 Ease does not always equal wholeness. Comfort is not always rightness. In fact, in the Bible, God’s presence is very often associated with fire and judgment. Job was terrified by it (see Job 13:21; 23:15). Isaiah said it induces the same kind of pain as is experienced by a woman in labor (see Isa. 26:17). God’s presence is ferocious at times, an anointing of flame. Does His presence bring refinement? Yes. Happiness and tranquility? Not always.
When my sister died, and God didn’t show up in the way I thought He would, I was completely lost. I longed for that still, small, comforting voice, not the whirlwind of fire I was experiencing. Never have I felt more betrayed by God than in that moment, not because she died, but because He didn’t seem to have any interest in alleviating the sheer discomfort of my emotions. It was like I had lost my sister and God all at once.
Judaism has a rich abundance of grief rituals that have remained largely intact over the centuries. It designates and names the different periods of grief after a loss. During the twenty-four to forty-eight hours between the actual death and the funeral, the relative of the deceased is said to be in a state of aninut. This is the most intense and disorienting stage of grief, as the shock of the loss is absorbed and necessary funeral arrangements are made. Shivah, which literally means “seven,” is the seven-day period of mourning following the funeral. During shivah, the needs of the mourners are met by visiting family and friends. Mourners stay home and are not expected to work or attend any outside functions.
Sheloshim is the thirty-day period after the funeral when the mourner slowly begins to integrate back into the normal rhythms and routines of life, but still refrains from attending public celebrations or participating in any form of entertainment. The end of sheloshim concludes the official period of mourning and is often marked by a special prayer or memorial service. For mourners grieving the loss of a parent, the formal time of mourning is extended another eleven months. The first year of mourning is known as the shnat ha-evel.
Finally, yahrzeit is the yearly anniversary of the loved one’s death. It is observed annually by lighting a yahrzeit candle, which burns for twenty-four hours in memory of the loved one who died.3
Traditional Jewish grieving rituals require a strict immersion into pain. Mourners sit on low stools or crates to signify that they have been brought low in grief—hence the term “sitting shivah.” In Orthodox tradition, mourners are to refrain from wearing fresh clothing, playing or listening to music, reading entertaining books or watching television, or engaging in physical intimacy with a spouse. They are even expected to refrain from warm baths or showers, which are seen to be physically comforting. A mourner should not greet people in the usual way (as in “Hello” or “Shalom”). Rather, they are to simply nod their heads in solemn acknowledgment of a visitor. Food can be delivered by friends, but it is expected to be simple and nourishing, no fancy desserts or indulgent sweets.4 It’s as if no pleasure the world has to offer should distract or detract from the experience of sorrow.
Our mainstream, modern-day American culture avoids pain whenever possible. We have been conditioned to be happy, gratified, and affirmed. Our aversion to negative emotions is certainly reflected in the language we use to talk about death and grieving. In her landmark book The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford describes in eye-opening detail the playbook of the American funeral industry. She notes an intentional shift in terminology used by funeral directors in the last century. The word “corpse” was initially replaced with the word “body” and later was replaced with “remains.” We now refer to “cremated remains” or “cremains” rather than “ashes.” As soon as a word becomes too closely associated with death and pain, we replace it. It’s a “casket” not a “coffin.” It’s a “mortician” not an “undertaker.” We plan “services” not “funerals.”5
Passed away. Departed. Eternally resting. These phrases and words are all designed to shield the heart from the reality of what has occurred. But what has occurred is death, a violent cessation. There is no way around it.
I found lots of creative ways over the years to ignore and numb the pain of death. When my grandmother died while I was in East Africa, I didn’t tell any of my colleagues in the field. I basically pretended it had not happened until I got home. After my first miscarriage, I binge-watched three seasons of Turn: Washington’s Spies (nothing like a little Revolutionary War drama to make you forget your troubles). After Rachel died, I became addicted to social media, constantly scrolling through the accolades and remembrances of her that people were posting. After my second and third miscarriages, I restocked our liquor cabinet.
I simply wasn’t ready for the pain. To embrace my pain was to admit the hard truth that God was not who I thought He was. That my life was not what I thought it was. That I was not who I thought I was.
While traditional Jewish mourning practices stand in stark contrast to my ritual of Netflix binging and gin and tonic, I recognize the value of facing the sadness head-on, without any palliation. Pain is inevitable in life. This is a truth that is hard for privileged, healthy people like me to recognize. But once you recognize it, there is an immense freedom that buoys you up and out of the malaise of denial.
There was a strange sense of liberation that finally came in admitting that my carefully constructed life was going to be harder than I’d hoped or planned. I accepted that I was going to be caring for my aging parents and aunt without my sister. I recognized the fact that Tim and I might never have the large family we desired, and that if we kept trying, we would likely face more losses. I gave up on pretending, on trying to jury-rig what was broken. The pressure to deny or resist the reality of my circumstances was gone. I no longer needed to struggle to manufacture the life I’d once had, the one I’d hoped for and thought I deserved. I released control and allowed myself to feel truly disappointed. I could just let my life be what it was.
My mom, who grew up in Florida, used to issue a stern warning to me and my sister about riptides any time we’d visit the beach as kids. I’ve heard the only hope for survival if you get caught up in a rip current is to not struggle. Give up trying to swim against the current. Allow yourself to be taken out to sea, or tread water moving parallel to the shore. You’ll reserve your strength and be able to swim back to safety when the tide has relented. Accept the reality of your circumstances.
Humans are remarkably resilient. Our eyes are designed to adjust to the darkness. This new night vision is almost like a superpower once acquired. But you have to keep your eyes open. You realize you can endure terrible things and still wake up in the morning. You can experience deep sadness and still love your friends, prepare a meal, make your bed, and watch a glorious sunset. Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. You can reconstruct a new life even if it isn’t everything you thought it would be. You realize you can experience the presence of God even in the absence of peace.
For several years leading up to my sister’s death and the loss of my pregnancies, I’d begun to have some serious questions about my faith. Like so many who have walked through a season like this, I could feel my doubts casting a long shadow on every facet of my life. I had lost that sense of certainty that God’s presence was real and active in my life. Where my previous automatic reflex in the face of challenge had been to pray and abide in the assurance of His companionship, I now found that prayer was quickly followed by questions, then confusion, then disappointment with myself for being fickle and disappointment with God for being elusive.
I found it difficult to worship. Sometimes impossible. I’d stand in shadowy corners of the sanctuary watching my fellow churchgoers raise their voices and their hands. I’d see their closed eyes and serene faces. I’d remember with muted sentimentality the days when I, too, could join the song, when His presence felt as close to me as the very breath in my lungs. I felt like the lamenter in Psalm 42, who remembers with longing what it was like to worship God in the temple even as he sojourns in a wilderness exile. I was thirsty for God. I was panting for God. I longed to worship, but I didn’t know how.
Needless to say, by the time I was barreled over with bereavement, I’d all but lost the muscle memory of faith.
I have no idea why God, in His infinite wisdom, allowed my crisis of faith to collide so violently with the trial of grief. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps God allowed me to walk through this season because there is an upside-down kind of grace in knowing what it is to feel utterly without Him. As it turns out, that has been an unexpected and mysterious gift. It’s a new vantage point for a person like me who grew up with God and the Bible and Jesus. I actually do need Him! Desperately! The feeling of His absence cultivated a beautiful longing in me and taught me not to take anything for granted. I never knew how much I wanted God’s presence until I knew what it was to be without it.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the story of a man who found a treasure hidden in a field and, at once, sold everything he owned so he could buy the field. Jesus says that this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. I’d never understood this story until I felt bereft of God. I would have given up everything—my possessions, my health, my security, even my loved ones—to get Him back, to know the treasure of His presence once more, to feel the profound comfort of knowing He is as real and relevant as skin and bone, as bread and water. Maybe that’s what the kingdom of heaven is like in its purest form: acute awareness of your need for God. Hunger. Thirst. Relentless longing.
“Shivah is intrusion.”
I am sprawled out on my basement floor scribbling notes on a loose-leaf sheet of paper with a purple pencil I found on the piano. I am officially in quarantine, having just learned I’d had contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Per CDC guidelines, I am to remain sequestered and away from other people until fourteen days past contact and monitor my symptoms. I can hear Jane’s little feet pitter-pattering on the floor above me. The sound of running water and clinking dishes means Tim is cleaning up after dinner. They are close but far away, and I am missing the presence of my people in my life.
I am trying to make the most of the situation and take advantage of the quiet alone time to work on some writing. I’ve called my friend Shelley to discuss the practice of shivah. Shelley is Jewish and grew up in Israel.
I met Shelley six or seven years ago when her husband was a colleague at the relief organization where I worked. Shelley also has had a long career in international aid and global health.6 She and I were good acquaintances for a long time. But when my sister died, we formed a fresh bond over the shared experience of bereavement.
Shelley has had an unimaginable encounter with grief. In one moment, her mom and her sister died in a horrific car crash. Her sister was nine months pregnant at the time. Ten days later, her grandmother, overcome by the loss, died as well. Shelley was just twenty years old at the time. Even as I type it now, the horror of it all takes my breath away. Shelley’s experiences have taken her deep into the heart of shivah.
At the very start of the conversation, Shelley immediately begins talking about the quality of presence that is essential to the experience of shivah. What Protestant and Catholic funeral traditions cram into a brief visitation and funeral service, Jewish custom stretches out into a seven-day period. For those seven days of mourning, streams of visitors pour into the shivah home. The family of the departed is not once left alone, from morning until evening. She shares that people literally begin knocking on your door at 7:30 a.m. Visitors don’t leave until it is time for you to sleep. She describes the guests as constant and intrusive, and I assumed that she would go on to say how exhausting and depleting that was for her. She shares, instead, how healing it was.
Shelley refers to shivah as a space utterly free of judgment or speculation. Familiarity and relaxed informality are of utmost importance. She laughs as she recalls one specific memory from her mother and sister’s funeral in Israel. “All the Americans showed up in suits and dresses and pearls, like they were dressed for a job interview. My Israeli friends were all dressed simply and comfortably.” No one dresses to impress. There is no effort on anyone’s part to perform during shivah. The point is not to produce but to be present—present for the pain and present for one another. The mirrors are covered. There is no need to wear makeup or to mask the sorrow.
Shivah is a time of sheltered grief, where the family can focus exclusively on tending to their pain and processing their sorrow. Friends take care of the household tasks, prepare food, and provide for the family’s needs. Visitors will bring simple dishes and gather around the family, sitting on the floor with them. Shelley says it’s the physical presence that matters most. It’s as if to say, “My words are hollow. My offering is not enough for this loss. But my body, sitting here next to yours, is good. It is enough.”
Visitors look to the friends of Job as a tutorial on how not to conduct oneself in the shivah home. To offer advice or ask too many questions is seen as harmful and unloving. You intrude with your presence, not with your words, or theology, or trite platitudes. Silence is the default setting, and friends take cues from the mourning family on how to engage. If the family is sharing stories, visitors will also share stories. If the family is weeping, visitors will also weep. If the family is laughing, visitors will laugh along with them.
Shelley tells me that the friends who visit during shivah serve as a visual template for the years of joy you spent with your loved one and the years of grief that lie ahead of you. People from various seasons of life show up, reminding the mourner of the continuum of life. Shelley tells me this gave her courage to step into the next season, knowing that the presence of community will always be there.
In the immediate aftermath of loss, you may wonder how to continue on without the person you love, without the beloved who was such a strong pillar in your life. The future can feel impossible without them. The visitors of shivah are an answer to that question. You are surrounded by pillars of love and support, people who have been there for you in the past and who will be there for you in the years to come.
I am realizing as Shelley talks that for a mourner to reap the full benefits of shivah, she must submit to a series of conditions that I, in my most natural state, fight without fail. You have to allow yourself to depend on others, to truly need them. You have to accept help. You are not allowed to host the visitors of shivah. You must lay aside the desire to perform or impress during your time of bereavement and allow yourself to be weak and frail. This isn’t a job interview or tryout for the grief all-star team. Shivah is a ritual for the broken, not the “best in show.” You are supposed to fumble through grief. Once you accept these conditions, the presence of so many visitors is no longer a nuisance or a bother but, rather, a balm.
Shivah provides that next right step for friends who want to offer comfort but who are afraid to encroach on the bereaved, afraid of not knowing what to say or what to do. And it shows a mourner how to receive love. Shivah is indeed intrusion. Death must be trespassed upon. In shivah, fear is interrupted by friendship. Loneliness is interrupted by love. Pain is interrupted by presence.
We speak often of the nearness of God. We rarely speak of His farness.
We speak fondly of the peace He gives us. We only ever whisper of the violent rending and crushing He allows as part of life in this world. If we long for the peace that comes with His presence, we must also accept the melting and molding it can bring as well.
Shelley shares with me one additional aspect of Jewish mourning: the mourner’s kaddish. This ancient prayer has been recited by the bereaved for centuries. The oldest version is found in a ninth-century prayer book, but it is likely older than that.7 Rabbi Wayne D. Dosick writes, “The Kaddish is not a prayer for or about the dead. It is a doxology: a prayer of praise to God.”8 The text of the kaddish is as follows:
Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world
which He has created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,
and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon;
and say, Amen.
May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored,
adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He,
beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that
are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel; and say, Amen.
He who creates peace in His celestial heights,
may He create peace for us and for all Israel;
and say, Amen.9
Shelley tells me that the mourner’s kaddish is to be recited not only at memorials but also during every prayer service—morning, noon, and night—at the synagogue. Sometimes it is repeated several times within a single service.10 By the time Shelley’s mother and sister died, she knew the kaddish by heart. Judaism seamlessly integrates the practices of grief and worship into everyday life. She’d grown up hearing it, reciting it with others who had lost loved ones. She says, “The kaddish’s frequent recitation in synagogue and in prayer books is a way to maintain an awareness and empathy toward those who grieve in our midst. And for mourners, the frequency with which it is recited provides permission to bring that grief into a welcome space of worship.” From childhood, Shelley had been taught to weep and worship in one breath.
In grief, the kaddish tumbles out from memory. Shelley pauses and I can sense her smiling even through the phone. “It’s almost like you vomit it out again and again until it’s true. The kaddish puts you in your place.” It puts grief in its place. It orients you to a bigger picture of God’s sovereignty and faithfulness. “When you elevate God in your grief,” Shelley says, “something transformative happens. You are lifted up as well. Your sights are lifted up.”
The recitation of the kaddish is meant to be communal as well. In fact, technically, one should not say the kaddish or hold service without the presence of at least ten people, which is an acknowledgment that we were made to worship and to grieve in community.
Perhaps the role of the visitors of shivah is to stand in the gap when you feel that God is far off. In truth, the presence of others can feel a lot like the presence of God. Kate Bowler wrote, “At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes. I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing notes and flowers and warm socks and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement. They came in like priests and mirrored back to me the face of Jesus.”11
In the same way, liturgy, a scripted prayer like the kaddish, bridges the gap between what we are feeling inside and what we trust to be true. The kaddish is the invitation that the psalmist speaks of in Psalm 42, out of the wilderness and back to the temple, back to the house of God.
I’ve come to believe that positive emotions or a sense of ease is not the best measuring stick for the quality of God’s presence or the sanctity of our worship. Grief is fierce. God is fierce. And I never knew something could be fierce and good at the same time until I met God in my grief, until I worshipped Him in my grief. I never knew until now the peace that passes my understanding of privilege and prosperity. True peace, in the end, is a better way of being, not simply a better way of feeling.
And in the meantime, while we wait for that consoling salve, while we hold vigil until the violence of it all subsides with time and tending, shivah intrudes upon the anguish with presence and with praise. Grief sometimes requires some holy stand-ins: friends and neighbors when God feels absent, the scripted recitation of the kaddish when the heart to worship is hard to find. For now, this is enough. For now, this is what the kingdom of heaven is like.