This Horrible, No-Good Friday: A Lament

Dear friends,

What do you do when he’s not there? When he’s not sitting beside you, when he’s not eating with you, sleeping with you, waking with you, peeing with you? What do you do when he’s gone – when your warrior, friend, Prince of Peace and Messiah has been obliterated?

Similarly, what do you do when your friend – Her name is Lyme Disease – is gone? What do you do when the friend you did everything with is no longer there? Who do you eat with? Who do you sleep with? Who do you wake to? My constant traveling companion is gone.

And I am lonely. 

But I was lonely with Her, too. The Lyme, She never talked back; She was predictable – that is, predictably unpredictable; and She never left my side.

And for all those reasons, I loathed Her. With Her, I missed precisely everything that scares me about human interaction. I felt as if I were talking to a brick wall; sometimes I mouthed words – my feelings, experiences, questions – just to release the tension within me. She never surprised me, never caught me off-guard, never caused me to laugh out loud. And She became my convenient excuse to keep others at a distance. Because I was betrothed to Her. My illness was I, and I was my illness.

On this horrible, no-good Friday, I grieve. I grieve for the relationship I have with this illness. I grieve that it's no longer around - I am finding that I hold my arm to my stomach just like in the old days. Because as it disappears, all that leaves is me, and that is me alone with my sin.

I grieve for the God that was pushed aside. I grieve for the opportunities missed, and I grieve for quickly rejecting all forms of love. I grieve for my childhood, my early adulthood, the friends I withdrew from and the people with whom I never gave a chance. I grieve over the choices I have made, and for camouflaging those choices with humor and ten layers of justification according to the Book of Anna.

I grieve for my staunch loneliness and I grieve that I could not see it until now. I am just now realizing what I have missed, that I have not been true to my Self for far too many years. I grieve for not paying attention to the signs that pointed me in the right direction. I regret that I hurt people along the way, that I interpreted their love for me as exactly the opposite.

On this horrible, no-good Friday, I grieve. And then I pray in the words of my pastor, Ryan Marsh, who wrote me today: "I've found that being a sinner is such a relief... no longer having to manufacture my own goodness, prove that I'm right, justify my existence, cover up my inadequacies, make excuses for my failures, lie about my selfishness... phew! Thank God that Jesus died on this day for sinners like you and me rather than for godly people!"

Jesus, come back, stay here, go with me. I have made room for you.

A.