Secrets Women Keep
by Sheila Walsh on 03/09/2010 07:03
Secrets Women Keep
"Sometimes I think I hate God," she said.
She didn't say it in a fit of rage or with tears running down her cheeks but quietly, controlled, well thought out. I just listened. She had waited until I'd finished signing the last book of the last woman in line before she approached me.
"How can I believe that he is both loving and powerful? That makes no sense," she said. "He has to be one or the other. He can't be both. Either he wanted to stop my boy killing himself but couldn't or he could have but just didn't care."
We both slid down the wall and sat on the floor in silence for a few moments. There was nothing to say. She sat with the raw wound of the mother of a child who took his life with no previous signs of mental distress. I sat as the one who had rubbed salt in that wound, declaring from the safety of a stage that I believe in a God who is both powerful enough and loving enough to reach his children in the darkest moments in life. I reached out to take her hand and she slid hers into mine. I became aware that big hot tears were hitting our hands and realized that they were mine. She squeezed my hand, looked in my eyes and asked me a question.
"Sheila, do you really believe that God is both loving and powerful?"
"I do, with everything in me, I do." I said.
"I do too," she said. "I just don't understand him."
Finally we both stood up and as she turned to leave she said, "I don't get to say all this stuff out loud very often. It's like my little unholy secret."
"I think telling the truth is one of the holiest things we get to do," I said.
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." 1 Corinthians 13:12
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