Entry Fifty-Nine: Isaiah 53
My grief has had a very positive effect on my life. It has taught me that I am not alone. At first, I could not have imagined me saying such a thing. I felt alone…I was alone…after all, didn’t my circumstances prove that? Aaron was present…at times I wished he were not…he was so unpleasant, and his unpleasantness made me feel even more alone…but he was also absent. In one sense, he and Benjamin were the same…they were both at once present and yet absent. And then, my community…they too were present, but in a very hostile way…first disowning my son and then disowning me. In this, they were also absent. And God? My mind told me He was always with me…my faith demanded that I believe that. But where was He? Hiding in impenetrable light?
No, I would never have been able to see anything positive in the beginning. All I could see was darkness. But now I have found that He was present in my aloneness. He did not only look on my pain…He took my pain upon Himself and bore it for me…otherwise I surely would have been crushed under the burden. Indeed, I believe I am beginning to understand God more than I ever have before. I now know how He feels when we, His people, turn away from Him…turn our backs on Him…reject Him for gods that are not gods. Isn’t that what Benjamin did to me? Isn’t that what Aaron has done as well? By embracing a theology of hatred, has He not strayed from the God Who defines Himself as love?
But my aloneness has thrown me into the path of others who are also alone…alone in grief…alone in poverty…alone. And now my aloneness has given way to a togetherness…a deeper togetherness than I have every experienced before. A mutual interdependence. Our mutual pain has stripped away all pretence…and we are open one to the other…together, we can be completely vulnerable and feel perfectly safe.
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