Where Were You?
A well-intentioned spiritual exercise, recommended by friends and mentors alike--spiritual sages who had all experienced the same need to bring meaning to a situation or a moment in time.
"Ask Jesus to show you where He was in that moment."
The suggestion, scrawled across the pages of my journal in months past and stamped into my brain as it continued to cross my path, it struck me as a worthy idea, a beautiful practice...
...for someone else.
I had approached this sacred practice with eager carelessness, immediately posing the pointed question.
"Yeah, where were You?"
But I only succeeded in opening a Pandora's box.
It seemed that the few times I tried to place Christ at the scene of one of those difficult moments in my life--the moments that brought me to a place of blinding fear or anxiety, the times rife with suffering--my intellect could certainly roll its eyes and tell me that of course He was there...but my heart simply could not find Him.
Desperately, I wanted it to feel its truth.
I wanted to see--to know He was present.
And indeed, in all of my journaling and meditation for months and months, the single message that kept surfacing, loud and clear was a simple, "I AM here."
But nothing more.
Under the weight of cross piled on heavy cross, my weary heart's unfiltered reply was, "okay, so You're here...doing what, exactly?"
One day, while searching for Jesus in my afflicted memories, when venturing toward that loaded question of "where?" I suddenly found myself revisiting little girl me, a mere bystander in a moment of witnessing another girl's sudden, though not at all perilous, physical suffering.
The experience had struck in me a deep terror of ever having to endure the same. A terror that over the years morphed into a monster of a phobia, urging me to grasp for control, goading me to constrain my world to one small "safe" cowardly corner. It would take years until I garnered enough courage to start the difficult work to break free.
As the memory played out, I let that loaded question fill my mind, "where exactly were you, Jesus, in this awful moment that planted such a vicious, ugly, controlling seed of fear?"
Immediately my imagination took me to His concern for the other girl--clearly suffering more than me. I pictured Him attending to the real victim, caring for her as I should have done. But in that moment, and so many subsequent moments, I saw myself simply shrinking into the background, silently and helplessly enveloped by fear.
His real answer to my question was lost to the narrow constructs of my mind, relegating Jesus to where my guilt told me He should be.
But even the constructs of my narrow mind couldn't reconcile Him seeing another's suffering while dismissing my pain as unimportant, or seeing me but choosing to do nothing.
And so I asked Him, "well, where else could you have been?"
I found no good answer.
I tried to remind myself that in all His goodness, He still must have been there. I told myself that was the only plausible truth.
And then the circular logic and sense of abandonment set in again. He tells me He is here--but doing what? I only felt the emptiness, the place of cold vacancy where He seemed to be missing in action, in consolation, in healing--the place where my heart insisted He should be if He truly cared.
Where were you in all the subsequent moments I could not escape, the moments that fed the fear, that cultivated the weed until grew uncontrollably and choked out my desire to fully experience life?
Where were you in all my many times of anguish, these years of pain upon pain when I lay curled in a ball of pitiful suffering? Where were you in the bitter aloneness when I cried myself raw? Where were you in the times when the pain was far too great for paltry, helpless tears?
And where are you now? Where is the healing? Where is the relief?
Is it any wonder I feel so abandoned?
As is often the case, He answers in times of silence, when I've finally stopped talking at Him long enough to be receptive, to let Him break through the walls of my deficiency and actually answer.
It was in such silence that He gently told me, You asked, but decided to answer for Me. You tried to apply your finite logic to my infinite ways. You wanted Me to tell, but you didn't open yourself to let Me show.
And so I asked Him, "well, where else could you have been?"
I found no good answer.
I tried to remind myself that in all His goodness, He still must have been there. I told myself that was the only plausible truth.
And then the circular logic and sense of abandonment set in again. He tells me He is here--but doing what? I only felt the emptiness, the place of cold vacancy where He seemed to be missing in action, in consolation, in healing--the place where my heart insisted He should be if He truly cared.
Where were you in all the subsequent moments I could not escape, the moments that fed the fear, that cultivated the weed until grew uncontrollably and choked out my desire to fully experience life?
Where were you in all my many times of anguish, these years of pain upon pain when I lay curled in a ball of pitiful suffering? Where were you in the bitter aloneness when I cried myself raw? Where were you in the times when the pain was far too great for paltry, helpless tears?
And where are you now? Where is the healing? Where is the relief?
Is it any wonder I feel so abandoned?
- - -
As is often the case, He answers in times of silence, when I've finally stopped talking at Him long enough to be receptive, to let Him break through the walls of my deficiency and actually answer.
It was in such silence that He gently told me, You asked, but decided to answer for Me. You tried to apply your finite logic to my infinite ways. You wanted Me to tell, but you didn't open yourself to let Me show.
"Okay, Lord. I'll try to shut up now. Show me?"
And there in the silence of adoration, rosary in one hand, the other supporting my weary body against the back of the pew, with scenes of the sorrowful mysteries flashing through my head, He showed me in full:
He was absolutely there.
He wasn't just sitting in His glory on high, looking down upon my difficult moments with placid resignation, as I had imagined Him.
No, he was there in action--in the thick of every single one of those moments--experiencing it with me and for me.
He showed me that in every moment of my suffering, He was present in His suffering--His passion--literally living it with me.
Every singular suffering I have lamented in the past. Every difficult moment that awaits me in the future.
- - -
And there in the silence of adoration, rosary in one hand, the other supporting my weary body against the back of the pew, with scenes of the sorrowful mysteries flashing through my head, He showed me in full:
He was absolutely there.
He wasn't just sitting in His glory on high, looking down upon my difficult moments with placid resignation, as I had imagined Him.
No, he was there in action--in the thick of every single one of those moments--experiencing it with me and for me.
He showed me that in every moment of my suffering, He was present in His suffering--His passion--literally living it with me.
Every singular suffering I have lamented in the past. Every difficult moment that awaits me in the future.
There He was. There He still is--
Praying through suffocating anxiety and abandonment in the garden.
Baring his face to the ridicule of flying fists and shaming spit.
Dragging a heavy beam.
And, so often, hanging from that same beam.
He showed me that His I AM is not one of stagnant placidity, of seeing or being, yet choosing not to act.
Baring his face to the ridicule of flying fists and shaming spit.
Dragging a heavy beam.
And, so often, hanging from that same beam.
He showed me that His I AM is not one of stagnant placidity, of seeing or being, yet choosing not to act.
It is not an I AM of finite suffering immovably tied to a moment in history 2,000 years ago, while He simply kicks back and lives the high life now.
Indeed, it is an ever-present I AM, an ongoing experience of His passion, a continuous living of every moment in time and eternity that He took upon Himself in one endless night and day.
His I AM is one of blood seeping through His skin under the unbearable weight of anguish. It is the agony of asking His Father the most loaded question of all, then sitting with the uncertainty, waiting for the appalling answer.
His I AM is the dark, eerie isolation of a midnight garden, the ache of abandonment when even the most trusted friends couldn't come through.
His I AM is the exhaustion, the unfairness, the disbelief of pain upon pain--when a savage scourging should have been the end of the suffering, not the beginning.
And yet pain upon agonizing pain He went on, showing me when I think that I simply cannot manage another moment, "I AM here in the grim, quiet acceptance of yet more, and more, and still more."
Yes, His I AM is one of a criminal's cross lifted onto an innocent man's brutalized, mutilated body, spent from spilled blood and lack of sleep and hunger--a broken body driven forward by an unbroken, unblemished mind and soul, housing a love that could never imagine giving up, because it would mean giving us up.
His I AM is a murmur between the shortened, shallow breaths of His execution, whispering "It is not the nails that hold me up. It is my own will, united with the will of my Father's, out of love for you."
In all those moments when I asked, "where were you?" When my heart accused him of standing by idly, of doing nothing, He showed me: THIS is what I AM doing. Here is where I hang in every single one of those moments, actively experiencing it with you and for you, Megan. For all the moments inflicted upon you. For all that you've inflicted upon others.
The memories flash again, Jesus front and center. I hold on to His truth.
I was there with you [aching in the garden].
I am here with you [dragging the cross up the hill].
I will be there for you [till the bitter end, breathing my last].
Hanging. Dying. Living.
For me.
With me.
His I AM is one of blood seeping through His skin under the unbearable weight of anguish. It is the agony of asking His Father the most loaded question of all, then sitting with the uncertainty, waiting for the appalling answer.
His I AM is the dark, eerie isolation of a midnight garden, the ache of abandonment when even the most trusted friends couldn't come through.
His I AM is the exhaustion, the unfairness, the disbelief of pain upon pain--when a savage scourging should have been the end of the suffering, not the beginning.
And yet pain upon agonizing pain He went on, showing me when I think that I simply cannot manage another moment, "I AM here in the grim, quiet acceptance of yet more, and more, and still more."
Yes, His I AM is one of a criminal's cross lifted onto an innocent man's brutalized, mutilated body, spent from spilled blood and lack of sleep and hunger--a broken body driven forward by an unbroken, unblemished mind and soul, housing a love that could never imagine giving up, because it would mean giving us up.
His I AM is a murmur between the shortened, shallow breaths of His execution, whispering "It is not the nails that hold me up. It is my own will, united with the will of my Father's, out of love for you."
In all those moments when I asked, "where were you?" When my heart accused him of standing by idly, of doing nothing, He showed me: THIS is what I AM doing. Here is where I hang in every single one of those moments, actively experiencing it with you and for you, Megan. For all the moments inflicted upon you. For all that you've inflicted upon others.
The memories flash again, Jesus front and center. I hold on to His truth.
I was there with you [aching in the garden].
I am here with you [dragging the cross up the hill].
I will be there for you [till the bitter end, breathing my last].
Hanging. Dying. Living.
For me.
With me.
And you, my daughter?
In all my moments, will you also be there for me?
In all my moments, will you also be there for me?
<3
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