Remember me
in my little boat
a hundred and fifty days alone
Remember me
and the faith I knew
to bring You my beasts, two by two
Remember the pain
Remember the fear
Remember forty days of tears
Remember the broken
and blood-stained ground
Remember the names
Remember the drowned
Remember the heartache
Remember the sigh
Remember the weight of the sky
Remember the flesh
Remember the flood
Remember what you saved me from
Remember me
in my little berth
drenched in nightmares of the earth
Remember me
as I rock to sleep
below deck of violent memories
Remember the pain
Remember the fear
Remember forty days of tears
Remember the broken
and blood-stained ground
Remember the names
Remember the drowned
Remember the heartache
Remember the sigh
Remember the weight of the sky
Remember the sorrow
Remember the grief
Remember to send an olive leaf
Remember me
in my little frame
bursting at the seams with pain
Remember me
that ash and dust is
hardly fit for the weight of injustice
Remember the pain
Remember the fear
Remember forty days of tears
Remember the hunger
Remember the stones
Remember the screams
Remember the groans
Remember the heartache
Remember the sigh
Remember the weight of the sky
Remember the nails
Remember the blood
Remember the rainbow
Remember my flood
Breaking addiction or numbing habits is a brave and heroic act of healing. But when you take away the numbness or blinders, and let emotion in, years worth of grief can suddenly overwhelm you: the weight of the world, the hurts of everyone you love, and the realization of your own trauma break the dam that's been building up for years.
2020 was the wrong year to start feeling!
I am deconstructing my religion because I need a God who knows and heals pain, not causes it. I need a God who advocates, not traumatizes. I think He's right there in the same Bible. You just have to clear a lot of deceiving serpents first.
As I recognize the healing power of letting myself grieve, I find it to be a holy act. Sometimes the pain is so overwhelming, I am forced to break something - with controlled purpose - instead of letting the sheer energy of emotion break my body instead. And as I sweep up the shards mixed with tears, I think, God did this too. Grief - the pain of loss - is His anger. He is angry for us, not at us.
The account of Noah can be seen as one of wrath, or one of unfathomable grief. Genesis 6 calls humans "sons of God." God's beloved image-bearers and children of delight. It doesn't say He was so angry that He punished them... it says He was grieved. It says He was sorry -sighing- that He made them... because they were hopelessly deceived and blind, knowing nothing but corruption and violence.
His beautiful and beloved creation was abusing each other.
And so I like to consider... God wept. For 40 days, He drowned the earth with His own tears, not enacting violence and vengeance, but washing it clean. Grieving His loss. Holy grief. God wept. God grieved. God destroyed corruption, and God saved those beloved who would multiply Truth rather than violence.
If I look at it this way, Jesus is no longer a contradiction, when the Bible says God is unchanging. Jesus wept. Jesus grieved. Jesus destroyed corruption, and Jesus saves the Truth-bearers.
And so, while I am called upon to remember God's love and salvation in my darkest and agonizing times, I would ask Him to remember His own grief and pain. Remember what it feels like to be utterly broken-hearted by the world, to be stabbed in the back, to be so sorry for the injustice, that you need to wipe clean everything you ever knew and loved to make room for Truth. Remember what it's like to suffer. Remember what it's like to be alone... the only thing God saw in the beginning and said "It is NOT good."
I ask Him to remember me, as He remembered Noah, and send me an olive branch, until I see the rainbow, until I know a whole new clean world.
I ask Him to remember me, as He remembered Jesus, and send me an angel to minister to me in the wilderness.