Redeemed

 Just before he died on the cross, Jesus cried out:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”                                           
Forsaken. It is a word so potent that I fear to say it out loud. But on this day when I am filled with grief, I cry out, “Where are you, God?”  There is no immediate answer.  And so, as I do when I am troubled, I go for a walk. On my third lap around an enormous parking lot a woman steps out of the lone car parked there and asks me, “May I walk with you?  My name is Rita.”  Rita explains that she is waiting for her roommate to finish work on the building’s security detail.

Happy for some company to interrupt my thoughts in the desolate lot, I eagerly say, “Yes!”  I slow to Rita’s pace and to her conversation.  The woman quickly opens up about her life and family.  As we approach a beautiful courtyard, she asks, “Can we sit down?”  We enter the courtyard and sit on facing benches.  She tells me about her 90-year-old mother who suffers from dementia.  Rita’s mother no longer remembers Rita when they are face-to-face, but she remembers a daughter named Rita and describes her daughter to this stranger that adult Rita has become.  Rita laughs at the insights these conversations provide about how her mother feels about the daughter she remembers.  Rita speaks of her love for her mother and about leaving home as a young bride. She speaks about missing her mother and then begins to tell me something: “After I left, I heard that my mother set the table…” but Rita cannot go on.  Her eyes well up with tears, and she turns her face away from mine.  Rita covers her quivering lips with her hand, and then she does it…she apologizes for her sadness, for becoming emotional.

I lean in and wait.  Rita collects herself and turns back to face me.  I see that she is embarrassed and fears resuming the conversation.  I say, “It is clear that your mother missed you too.”  This acknowledgment and acceptance remove the emotional chokehold on Rita’s throat, and the conversation continues. Rita has lived away from her mother’s home for a lifetime.  In the intervening years, Rita has become a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother, and yet she is moved to tears by this memory of being loved, being missed, being longed for, and feeling responsible for that longing, and now, she feels the way her mother once did as her mother’s dementia leaves Rita feeling forsaken. 

We live in a time when people are feeling overwhelmed by events and some are dying of loneliness, and yet the expression of sadness seems to be the only form of speech that is not acceptable.  Nothing is more threatening than to hear that someone is sad or scared or empty.  We sense that sadness is dangerous, that we might have to act, and so sadness festers in silence.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus’ last words before he died--a stunning demonstration of his bravery and his humanity. 

I asked, “Where are you, God?”

He answered, “May I walk with you?”    
  
And now my question is this:  With 8.2 billion people in the world, need any of us feel forsaken?  

Walk with someone today.