“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1 NIV)
Questioning
In times of grief, we tend to ask a lot of questions. When we are in shock and denial we ask, “Is this really happening? Is there a way for it not to be true?” When we are trying to avoid facing the reality of our losses through some form of escape, we want to know, “Where can I flee? Where is a safe place?” If we are in the victim role we wonder, “ Who is going to rescue me?” “When is it going to happen?”
At some point in our journey of grief, most of us reach the place where it is no longer possible to live in denial, avoidance or false hope. The reality of our situation breaks through our defenses, and we are compelled to face the truth of what has happened, no matter how difficult. To the question whether a personal tragedy is real, we must answer, “Yes.” To the question where we can flee to safety, we are forced to answer, “Nowhere.” To the questions who or what will come and give us a different situation, and when that will take place, we are required to admit, “It’s not going to happen.”
At the point when it is no longer possible to avoid facing the reality of our losses and their implications, we often find ourselves uttering a new question. We begin to ask “Why?”
The Why? Question
The question Why? may be the most asked of all human questions, because we want to believe there is an explanation for everything. Sometimes when we ask why, we actually mean how, as in questions of why things in the physical universe work the way they do. For example, if we ask why hurricanes form over the ocean, we probably are expecting a meteorological explanation. On the other hand, when a hurricane strikes our community, causing loss of life and property, the why question seldom is about cause and effect. Or if a loved one dies in a car accident and we ask, ‘Why?’, we usually are not looking for an explanation about someone running a light or passing on a curve. In either case we are seeking something much more profound.
When we ask the question, why? in the midst of tragedy, we most often are asking a spiritual question, whether or not we recognize it to be so. Why? questions tend to arise when we no longer can avoid facing the reality of our situations, and we long to reach a place on our journey where we again will have some serenity. When we ask why? we are expressing a desire to reach acceptance, to make peace with our situations, and to find some spiritual solace. But the question itself is a sign that we are not yet ready to embrace the reality of our losses. Before we can know acceptance, we must continue a while on the journey of grief. We have more work to do.
We all want to believe things happen for a reason in this world. We sometimes imagine that if someone could answer the question ‘Why?’ to our personal satisfaction, we might be able to make our peace with what has happened. This is particularly true of persons of faith. We may feel we have seen God’s mysterious hand working for good in all sorts of situations. But at the moment of being no longer able to avoid coming to terms with our losses, we are unable to see any point to such things. We find ourselves questioning God’s justice and love. Such feelings are normal, though we may not feel they are.
While asking ‘Why?’ is perfectly natural, the difficulty is that no explanation will satisfy us. If someone says to us, God does not make such things happen, we want to know why God made a universe where such stuff happens anyway. If we are counseled that this is a part of God’s plan, then we want to know why, if God is good, God would make such an awful plan. If someone attempts to explain to us why there is evil in the world we ask them why innocent victims must suffer for the sins of others. Every explanation results in another question why.
Why Me?
One of the reasons the answers we receive are experienced as inadequate, is that we are asking a profoundly personal question. We are not just asking why such things happen in the universe, but “Why has this terrible thing happenedto me, or to someone I love?”
The question Why me? arises out of what usually are hidden assumptions about our lives in this world. At some level of our being, we believe bad stuff happens to other people. We see it on the news every night. We consider this reality to be regrettable, but to be expected. We may wonder why such awful things happen to innocent people in this world, but rarely do we lose sleep over it. Sometimes particular events may make us especially sad and may create within us a desire to help relieve the suffering of those who have experienced some terrible loss. Yet whether we become involved in their suffering or not is entirely optional.
But it is a different matter when a tragedy impacts us personally. At some level, we think terrible things may happen to others, but they are not supposed to happen to us. Perhaps this is because, at some dimension of our consciousness, we think of ourselves as special, and therefore as exempt from becoming victims of tragedy. Or maybe it is because we cling to the notion that bad things only happen to bad people, while those who live good lives are supposed to be immune from such things. And if we are persons of faith, we may make the assumption that “a good and faithful servant” will be protected by God at all times from all but the smallest of troubles. So when tragedy strikes us, our cry is not only, “Why is this happening?” but, also, “Why is this happening to me?”
A Sign of Anguish
None of this is to say it is wrong for us to ask why? questions. Such questions are important components of our journey through grief. For many of us, healing can come only when we have struggled with these questions of the heart. But when we ask them, if we are to continue successfully on our journey, it is important to remember that we seek something deeper than explanations.
When Jesus was dying on the cross, he quoted Psalm 22:1. He cried out to his Heavenly Father, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It should be clear to all thoughtful readers of Scripture, that Jesus was not asking a philosophical question about his suffering. He was expressing to God the Father his anguish, and the feeling of abandonment that we all have when we are alone in our agony. When we remember Jesus on the cross, it is clear we need not be concerned that God is in any way offended by our questioning. Those who ask “Why?” can take comfort in the fact that both the writer of the Psalm and Jesus asked the question, during their own most personal tragedies.
Therefore, while the question “Why me?” may be for us an indication of a misplaced notion of entitlement in this world, it also should be understood as a cry of the heart. It is a calling out to our Creator to hear our distress. It is a means of letting God know how much pain we are in. Just as children feel the need to let parents know how much they hurt after falling down and scraping their knees, so we too have a mysterious need to express to God the anguish of our emotional pain. And that should be recognized as a clue to the function of the questioning phase in the healing process. When we can be honest with ourselves about the reality of our losses, and when we can be honest with God about the degree of our pain, we are preparing ourselves for healing.
God’s Questions of Us
Much of the book of Job deals with the questions raised by a good and righteous man who experienced unimaginable losses. Job asked God, “Why did I not die in my mother’s womb?” “Why have you made me a target?” “Why do you persecute me?” Toward the end of the story, God turned the tables on Job. Up until then, God had listened patiently to Job’s lament. But then God commanded Job, “Brace yourself like a man, I will question you, and you shall answer me.” What followed was a series of questions designed to make the point that Job, a human being, is not in a position to understand the ways of the Lord of heaven and earth.
When we find ourselves struggling with the questions “Why?” and “Why me?”, it is helpful for us also to listen for the questions God is asking us. God can handle our questioning, just fine. Asking them can help prepare us for the next step of our journey. But we are not likely to take that step successfully, if we do not cease our questioning of God long enough to hear the questions God is asking us.
For example, we may sense that God is asking us, “What attitude are you going to have about your loss?” “Are you going to be bitter and angry?” “Are you going to give in to depression and give up?” “What are you going to do?” Or we may feel ourselves being asked, “When are you going to notice the many ways I am caring for you in your grief?” and “How can this emotionally painful change in your life help you to become a kinder, more loving person?” With such questions, God calls us away from the seduction of self-pity and the temptation to live our lives as a protest against the way life is for all of us.
Cynthia
Cynthia and Mike both believed they were soul mates from the moment they met. That conviction had become even stronger over their twenty-six year marriage. They loved to share experiences, and they cherished every moment when they could be alone together. When their youngest daughter finally went off to college, they celebrated their new opportunity for intimacy and freedom with a second honeymoon on a Caribbean cruise. A few weeks later, forty-eight-year-old Mike dropped dead of a heart attack, while jogging in the park early one Saturday morning. Cynthia felt as if everything that made her life worth living had been destroyed.
Once the initial shock had eased and her denial had worn thin, the forty-seven- year-old widow became obsessed with a question she could neither answer nor avoid. “Why?” she tearfully asked, “Why did this happen to me?” She asked it over and over, night after night, as she lay sleepless and alone in her bed. It was the only prayer she was able to pray. She tried to pray the types of prayers she thought people were supposed to pray in similar situations, prayers for comfort and strength to face her difficulties. But she could never finish those prayers. In mid-sentence she would fill with anguish, and the only words that came were the lone words that expressed how she truly felt. “Why, God? Why me?” she cried. No answer came, and after such moments she was consumed with a dark cloud of gloom that made even worse her sense which life was no longer worth living.
Cynthia and Mike had built their marriage and family life on faith. There was never any question about how the family would spend Sundays. They all went to Sunday School and Church, and when they were old enough the children also went to the youth group on Sunday evenings. Cynthia and Mike had participated in Bible study groups for many years, and had a serious, though sporadic, devotional life. The family prayed together at mealtime, and both parents had been conscientious about helping the children deal with life challenges in the context of faith.
Cynthia knew, as everyone does, that life can bring sudden and unexpected tragedy. But she never really believed it could happen to her. She always had a rather simple faith, uncomplicated by serious doubts or questions. Cynthia would not have admitted it, but deep inside her being she believed that because she, Mike, and the children were a family of faith, God had placed some kind of protective shield around them. As far back as she could remember, she had thought if she did her part, God would protect her and those close to her from harm. Intellectually she knew better. But in her heart of hearts, she was convinced that as long as she was not a bad person, bad things would not happen to her. At least she had believed that until Mike died. Now she did not know what to believe.
For a long time, Cynthia did not tell anyone about her spiritual struggle. It occurred to her that she might speak with a friend from church, or her pastor, about her questioning. She played out the scenario in her mind, but soon rejected the idea as too risky. She decided neither of them likely would understand what she was going through. She would get no satisfying answers, she predicted, only painful feelings of being judged for what she already had come to believe was her inadequate faith. Cynthia chose to suffer alone, and continued to ask “Why?”, night after night.
One weekend when Cynthia’s three-year-old grandson was visiting her, she found herself irritated because the child was asking her why about almost everything. And when she answered as best she could, he would again ask “Why?”.
Toward the end of the weekend, when Cynthia had tried to answer, as best she could, a long list of her grandson’s “why” questions, she turned the table on him. “Why do you ask “Why?” so much?” she asked him.
He became silent for a long time, frowned, stuck out his bottom lip in a pout, and in a rather pitiful voice said, “I don’t know.”
“Well, I will tell you a secret.” Cynthia said softly, “Sometimes when you ask ‘Why?’ I don’t know either.” Needless to say, only a few minutes passed before she was bombarded by another series of why questions.
Cynthia doubted that a three-year-old was capable of the kind of reflection which she was demanding with her challenge to him. But she thought a person of her own mature years certainly ought to be. “So,” Cynthia asked herself, “Why is it that I keep asking ‘Why?’”
Cynthia had been struggling alone with her questioning for several weeks, when Ruth, an old college friend Cynthia had not thought about in years, called to express condolences. Ruth told Cynthia she had heard from a mutual acquaintance about Mike’s death. She had lost her own husband to kidney disease almost two years earlier. She suggested the two of them get together to renew their friendship. Cynthia eagerly accepted the offer. A few days later, the two of them met at a local sandwich shop for lunch.
After the two widows shared their accounts of loss and talked about the differences in impact between a sudden death and a slow dying, Cynthia shared with Ruth her obsession with the question Why?.
“So you are a why baby too,” Ruth said. “I certainly know where you are coming from. You have lots of company. Been there, done that.”
“So what’s the answer?” Cynthia asked. “I need someone just please to tell me why this happened to me. Why did Mike have to die?”
“Let me ask you something,” Ruth responded gently. “What are you really asking when you ask, ‘Why?’ and why do you ask such a question? What kind of answer are you expecting? Can you conceive of an answer that would satisfy you or take away your pain, if you were convinced it was true?”
Cynthia had reflected on this same question at some length following her grandson’s visit. She still did not know how to answer it.
“Look,” Ruth said, “Nothing is more natural than to ask ‘Why?’ when a tragedy befalls us. People try to comfort us by telling us ‘It is God’s will,’ or ‘things happen for a reason,’ all of which may be true in some unfathomable way. But such answers only cause us to ask more questions. When people said that to me, I wanted to say, ‘Why is it God’s will? And what possible reason could there be?’ You see, the thing other people don’t understand, unless they have been through something similar, is that we don’t really want an explanation.”
“Then what are we looking for?” Cynthia asked.
“We would love to turn back the clock and restore things to the way they used to be. That is what we really want. But we know that can never happen, because life doesn’t work that way. So when we ask the why question, we don’t expect an answer. One of the things we are doing is expressing a desire for our emotional pain and our feelings of abandonment to be validated.”
“We are also registering a protest. We protest against a universe in which such awful things happen. We protest against the injustice of a world where such things happen to the good and decent people we love. We protest against a God who, if He does not directly cause these things to happen, He allows them to happen. We feel some great cosmic mistake has been made, and we can’t fix it. All we can do is express the pain it has caused.”
“I think I understand what you are getting at, but I don’t think I ever expected to live in a world where nothing bad ever happens,” Cynthia said. “I just want to know ‘Why me?’”
“Of course you do. But it’s the same deal. We feel we are somehow entitled to a free ride. By virtue of showing up in life, or living morally, or being religious, we think nothing bad is ever supposed to happen to us. We have the illusion that this is the natural order of things. When we are children, we are told if we are bad we will be punished, but if we are good we will be rewarded. We don’t think about the real world out there, beyond the security of our homes that doesn’t play by those rules.”
Ruth paused for a moment and then continued. “After my Tom passed away, I went into a serious state of self-pity. One day, after many months of asking ‘Why me?’, it hit me. ‘Why not me?’ We live in a world where a lot of bad stuff goes down every day. Did I have any more right to a life free of tragedy than anyone else? What kind of narcissistic pride is that? Jesus said the rain falls on both the just and the unjust, and I take that to mean it does so whether it is a gentle rain needed for crops to grow or a terrible destructive flood. It isn’t personal, even though it affects me very personally.”
“I also had another insight along the way. When everything was going great, I didn’t think to ask ‘Why me?’ I only did that after it all was taken from me. The whole time Tom and I were together, I took our wonderful life for granted. I don’t think I appreciated all those precious moments we had together. But after they were gone, I sure grieved their loss. It has taken a lot of time. But I now thank God for the wonderful times we shared. I realize today that I grieved so greatly because I loved and was loved so much. How blessed I am to have had such a wonderful marriage. Now, I try each day to appreciate the important relationships in life I still have.”
“I don’t know why Tom was taken from me,” Ruth continued, “and I don’t know why Mike was taken from you. And I’m fairly certain that neither does anybody else, except God, and sometimes, in my weaker moments, I am not so sure about God. All I know is that we don’t ask Why unless we are confronted by a mystery. When we are confronted by a life-changing loss, we are dealing with the mysterious nature of life and of God. We want to take the mystery out of the mystery, but there is no way to do that.”
“So does that mean you have stopped asking Why”, Cynthia asked.
“To be perfectly honest,” Ruth responded, “not entirely. But I have done a lot of praying for the ability to accept the things in life over which I have no control. And while my cry of ‘Why?’ has gone unanswered, God has helped me make progress in coming to terms with my situation. I ask different questions now. I ask questions like, ‘What now?’ ‘What am I supposed to do with my life?’ ‘What do those around me who are still with me need from me?’ For me, these questions feel a lot more productive than the why question. So I continue to pray for guidance and direction, and I feel that is starting to happen. In fact, I think that is why I called you. I had the strongest feeling when I heard about your loss, that I should get together with you.”
A few days later, Cynthia awoke from a nap on the couch, with an overwhelming sense that she no longer was questioning God. God was now questioning her. She was not sure whether she had dreamed it, or whether it had just come to her in the twilight between a deep slumber and a waking state. But she heard the question quite clearly, nonetheless. “What now Cynthia?” “What now?”
A little more than a year later, Cynthia was asked to teach her adult Sunday School lesson. When she discovered the lesson was to be about the Old Testament character, Job, whose family and wealth were taken from him in sudden tragedy, she smiled and thought to herself, “God has quite a sense of humor.”
Cynthia told the class that Sunday morning the story of her journey and her questioning. And she told them about the fateful conversation with her friend Ruth.
Speaking to the class from her notes, Cynthia said, “The question Why? is not only a natural one, but it probably is an essential one for our spiritual growth in times of profound tragedy. It is our human cry when we are wounded in spirit by an overwhelming loss. Tragic events overwhelm us. They disorient us. Before they happen, life makes sense to us. Afterwards, all our assumptions about the meaning of existence are called into question. When we find ourselves asking ‘Why?’, we are expressing our desire for life once more to make sense to us. We are longing for our faith in the goodness of God and our confidence in God’s care to be restored. Asking ‘Why?’ can be an expression of abandonment, and, at the same time, it can be the beginning of a more realistic and profound faith.”
“The Biblical character Job dramatizes a person desperately attempting to hold on to an inadequate faith which failed to account for the reality of real life experience. Whatever his sin, Job knew his suffering was exceedingly out of proportion.
‘If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?’ (Job 7:20 NIV)
Job was broken by the weight of his losses. His tragedy was too great to fit into his old theology. He was forced to question everything, all his assumptions about life and faith. He begged God to put him out of his misery and just let him die. And when that didn’t happen, he dared to question God’s wisdom and justice. In the great climax of that drama, God turned the tables. God questioned Job for assuming the creature could understand, question and judge the Creator of all that is. And Job learned, as countless others have learned, that after tragedy strikes, nothing is ever the same again. But there can be a new beginning.”
“For persons of faith who ask, as I did, the question ‘Why me?’, it is important to recognize that our questioning is a longing for healing. When we understand that our deepest desire is for God to acknowledge our devastation, we are able to transform our questioning into a prayer for healing. And when we begin to seek healing, we are on our way to a recovery, which will benefit not only us, but also those around us who need us to be there for them in times of difficulty. That is what happened to my friend Ruth. And because she had made that journey, it has happened to me as well. Ruth and I never found answers to our questions of why our life-mates were taken from us so early. But we have experienced something else that we have come to believe to be far more beneficial.”
“O Lord my God, I called to you for help and you healed me (Psalm 30:2)
