My friend felt moved to attend the Women’s March in Washington D.C. on January 21, 2017 and her husband suggested she take a friend along for the six hour drive. I was that friend. “Sure, I’ll go. Why not,” I thought. When we sat down to make the signs we would carry during the march, I had no specific agenda of my own. We had just begun a study of the book of Jeremiah at church and so Jeremiah 6:14: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace,” seemed to fit my mood about how I feel right as an American and my current state of grief after recently losing my mom to cancer.
For me, 2016 was a year of personal lament. In January of 2016, I started a new career working as a advocate for people who have life-altering disabilities that are made more complicated by the reality of homelessness. I quickly found myself feeling grief and sorrow almost everyday. As a witness to my client’s lives, there have been many moments during this past year where I broke open, sobbing as I felt the weight of their sorrow in my own heart. The most intense moment for me was the day I met a homeless woman in the ED whose daughter had turned her out into the street… a woman in the process of recovering from a house fire that burned over 90% of her body… a fire that burned her breasts right off her frame and scarred her from neck to toe… covered in her own shit (the result of a broken colostomy bag), she grabbed my hand and cried out, “Why did God let me live?!” How does one answer that question? It was a question so deep and painful that it must be left for God… I stood there with her in silence… weeping.
This past year in my work, I heard “Why God?” from so many others. The question was asked in different ways and under various circumstances, but the question remains… unresolved and unanswered and often leaving us undone at times. One thing about my work, I could always go home and escape the grief for a time, but in August, my 68-year-old mom died after living with cancer for ten years. This took the question of “Why God?” to a much deeper and intimate level. I started waking every day with the question of “Why God do we suffer?” as my first thought. Quickly lament and sorrow become the elevator music in my life, and strangely I got comfortable with it. I am learning to explore the space of sorrow and mine for “gold nuggets” in deep pain. I know there are lessons to be learned and insights waiting to be discovered in this experience. Many days there are not answers and I’m Ok with that, but I keep asking.
When I was invited to Washington to march with other women, I took my lens of grief with me and discovered in my experience, that the Women’s March was one big cry of lament. Almost 500,000 people gathered on the streets of DC and cried out, “Why God?” in their own unique heart-felt emotional languages as they expressed their personal and collective mirages of pain, suffering, fear, and sorrow. We all are aware that since our recent election, that our asking is colored by our own deep cultural, moral and political ideologies. This year Americans reevaluated, realigned and regrouped. Our feelings and opinions sparked anger and fierce words continue. We have been defriended, unfriended and newly freinded. But I see our reactions, cries and shouts for understanding, explanation and resolution as facades for our deep cries for HEALING and WHOLENESS.
As children of God, God created us to be in God’s own image. Like I was reminded by a Catholic nun who spoke at the rally, we are all skin and sinu under our flesh. We are deeply and unarguably connected to each other through our bodies. Never can we make that part of us different, nor can we deny the similarity of our brains, hearts and feet! In DC, my body was crushed into unknown bodies on crowded Metros and in the streets. People whom I would never know, but who in a few hours that day, became deeply connected to me through our mashed, mingled bodies and our voices. Bodies who cried out and asked, “Why God?” in so many different ways.
During the rally, I heard stories that deeply moved me and that I especially connected to because of my own sorrow. The most moving moment for me, was when Trayvon Martin’s Mom got to shout his name into a microphone several times during the performance of a song by Janelle Monae. The crowd of half a million people responded by shouting “say his name!” And she shouted his name over and over again as the crowd encouraged her to “say his name!” I wept. His name on her lips, the product of her breath which came from her body that birthed him as a baby long ago, was released into the world to be heard by more than a million sets of ears in one moment in time. How would I feel if I could shout my mother’s name, “Mary Shaub” out into a crowd like Trayvon’s mom?
To shout “Mary Shaub!” Asking my God, “Why God?” To shout for her life and to honor her in death. To shout that she lived and was amazing and special! To shout because in me and in our family, her preciousness lives on. It’s in the smile of her granddaughter (my sweet niece) and in how my sister cares for her babies. My mom is in me when I catch a glimpse of her as I look at myself in the mirror. I saw my mom in the faces of other moms in the crowd in DC… my mom is Trayvon’s Martin’s mom and I am her and she is me and we, and we, and we… and we all stood together with all our sorrows and we shouted as one. The words not as important as the way. The way in which we found unity and hope in uncertainty, unknowing and asking, “Why God?” Where I found glimmers for myself of peace, hope and wholeness. I know and trust that the Holy Spirit works ceaselessly to fill spaces, places, hearts and minds always and everywhere. It’s how the shouted name of “Trayvon Martin” by his mom helped to heal me a little more this past weekend.
Because I am a Christian, my “Why God?” is tightly tethered to the resurrection of Jesus’ victory over death. My faith assures me there is a hope and a future when my mind (logic and reason) cannot reach that point. In D.C., I cried out for peace to dress the wounds of my brothers and sisters with the same breadth and depth that I cried out to have my own pain healed. One voice, my breath. Many voices carried on collective breath. I am learning that faith, hope and love are ever present in our sorrow. I know that expressing my pain is good and necessary and that as a human race we are grieving for each other. We need to stop denying our connections and demand justice and mercy for all people who are made of flesh and sinu. We must give each other the spaces and places to ask “Why God?” in our own ways. To listen, we must put our personal agendas aside and be open to hearing the stories of others. We must get to the place where we can cry together and help each other to heal our personal and collective wounds.
“Mary Shaub!”… “Say her name!”
“Mary Shaub!”… “Say her name!”
“Mary Shaub!”… “Say her name!”
“Mary Shaub!”… “Say her name!”
“Mary Shaub!”… “Say her name!”