I tried to think of a great name for this blog, but words fail me. They often do, but they really do right now. I can’t think of anything to call this but what it is. I wrote this for Jonny. Maybe those are the best words there can be for it. This is a psalm I wrote for a class at school. After I did the entire assignment, it didn’t turn out so much like a school assignment as like a journal – or a mix of the two. Anyway, I thought I would share it with you. If it sounds odd, it is because it is written mainly for school.
You abandoned us in our time of need;
What did he do wrong, what did we do wrong?
All is crashing down, nothing is the same.
Help us in this pain, save us from this life.
Be faithful to us,
Be our God – past, present, and future.
But you showed up in our time of need,
You rescued us from our doubt and uncertainty.
We know you are love and grace and mercy.
You are jealous for us and have always been there.
We will rejoice in this suffering,
We will praise you forever.
This psalm is about the loss of a friend. A close friend of mine died last October, and this psalm is about his passing and the difficulty of getting through that. Jonny had leukemia and was only seventeen when he died. Verses 1-5 describe how hard it was after his death. It felt as if the world was crumbling around me and everyone around me. This is the time in the lament psalms when the author is accusing God of something. They are going through something, and they say that it is God’s fault that it has happened. That is much like what this felt like. At first it felt like God was angry with us and was causing bad things to happen. I was angry with him and I doubted a lot. But in my doubt and anger, I wondered if it was okay to do that. Is it okay to yell at God and be angry with him? I could not stop myself, though. That was my situation, it was how I felt.
The next section of the psalm, verses 6-8, describe me going to God and asking for help. I am no longer able to do it on my own. I cannot function by myself anymore and I need his guidance. In the psalms, this would be where the psalmists petitioned God for intervention. They would ask for his help in their struggles. At some point, you just know you can no longer survive on your own. I got to that point after Jonny died. I had no friends here that understood what I was going through, and all of my friends at home were so far away. The only one to turn to was God. At some point you have to make a choice of whether to let God work through the pain or to turn away from him.
The end of the psalm, verses 9-14, praises God for the work he is doing in my life and the work he did through this situation. I am finally able to feel again and realize that God is good and is worthy of praise for his works. I am able to see how he worked through Jonny’s death and am able to focus on his amazing and fulfilling life rather than his early death. This is moving from disorientation to new orientation. The pain is subsiding and a new season is dawning. It is becoming easier to breathe and get through the day. I think that it is always hard to live without him, but it gets easier. It is easier to focus on his life rather than his death. It is easier to wake up and not think of the things that you are not going to get to do with him. A year ago I was in tears because the wound was still fresh. It was hard to believe that it was real, that he was really gone. Now, I just helped with a youth retreat that he would have been helping at too if he was still here. It was bittersweet. It was a good weekend that was able to remind me of the good memories rather than the sad ones. I was able to talk with a great friend about Jonny. These are just the steps of moving into new orientation. Life goes on, and you still remember, but you remember the good.
