12 Questions Series: And what would you say if you could?
In Bhanu Kapil’s book, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, there’s a Twelve Questions poem that I knew I wanted to find answers to the moment I read it. I started responding to the prompts in February 2021 and some old entries include How Will You Begin, How Will You Live Now, and Who Are You and Whom Do You Love?
Question 12: And what would you say if you could?
I am a child of God. A full heart drenched in mercy-buckled in grace-knees pressed to the ground in surrender-lips moving in whispered prayers-child of God who still struggles with exercising faith. I know that God is good and compassionate. I believe that His ways are perfect and His love for me is unconditional. That He is sovereign and closer to me than my very skin and yet, I am the first of His own to be crippled by fear and panic. To have doubts when things go against what I expect, when I am once again hit with the reality that I have very little control over my circumstances, and that frightens me. That when I get a phone call from my mom about her health, I cry immediately. I’m in a dining hall with a plate of food before me. There are people around me, and I just weep. My first instinct is never that of hope or faith, or to boldly declare His power over all things. It is always fear, always despair. On the phone, I say, “I do not want anything to happen to you.” The easiest thing the world can do is scare me, and yet God calls me into a different reality—that of peace, love, of sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). I know my friend is right when she tells me at our waffle date that I do not have a full grasp of who I am in God, and that has affected how I perceive myself, what I reduce myself to, what I tend to settle for and how I think lowly, so lowly of myself. Henri J.M. Nouwen said “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” If I could, I would say I am a clinging and desperate child of God, and every day I need the gift of faith because it does not come quite readily to me. And yet how marvelous that I can ask for it daily, and believe that the One who knitted this heart together sees me, hears me, and is gently at work in me and in everything that pertains to me for His good works.
I think of death a lot, mine especially. I do not think in terms of my readiness for it because I don’t know that anyone is ever ready for that, but I do like the blessed assurance of knowing the resting place of my soul. I suppose if I’m being honest, I think of the how. I wonder if it would be when I go to sleep, a terrible, debilitating illness that eats away at me, or an accident that I never see coming. On a very ordinary day. I pick out my clothes—jeans and a T-shirt, of course, a pair of sneakers; maybe I skip breakfast that day, and then I step out of my apartment, without a clue I wouldn’t be returning to this place. I think about the state of my room and what my belongings would say about me: my bible and journals on my nightstand, my desk filled with cluttered books and pens, and my bookshelf with everything in place. All my Alice Munro short story collections. A book that made me cry: Yanagihara’s A Little Life. A book that opened my eyes to the wonder of language: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. My unimpressive number of Toni Morrison books, which needs to change. The box filled with letters to the man I hope to marry. My two failing plants. The one bible verse printed on a white sheet and taped on the wall. The borrowed keyboard across from my bed and all my handwritten notes in my lesson book. My small savings stashed away in the bank (which should go to my family, by the way, and the friend of my heart, S.H.). I think about who would come to clear my stuff, who would keep what, and what would they throw away or donate. What becomes the most valuable thing when one’s breath is sucked out of a room, I wonder? I think about the last person I would have spoken with on the phone or texted, and I hope that I was kind to them and patient. I hope I laugh on the last call. I would want them to remember the sound of my laughter, like I remember my dad’s voice. If I’m being honest, I don’t think so much about what people would say; I believe I have a fair idea and I’m grateful to live in a world where people tell me they love me, tell me often and kindly what they think of me and I never have to question it. I wish I thought more of the people I’d be leaving behind, and their stroke of grief, but perhaps it is because I know those who live will continue to live. Yes, they will mourn and be filled with the shock and weight of the loss, but they will keep on, as I have, as we all have until it’s our time. I will say that grief, while unbearable and sharp-toothed, has in it something that makes us better for having felt it, and for many others, worse. May it be a burden of ease for my people. Because truly, eternity with the Father is and has always been my promise; I’ll be walking right into it. If I could, I would say I am not afraid to die, but I can’t get out of my mind how the end of my life would happen and I hope, like everyone else perhaps, that it is painless, and even instant. I am not one for long-suffering, that I’m most certainly sure of.
There is only one living and true God, and in His great power, He spoke the universe into being. Through Him, all things were made and nothing was created except through him (John 1:3). I find myself in a space where faith is a rather unpopular subject, and I am the biggest coward who never ever utters a word. I see my own shame and fear at speaking up, how I make myself small, how I blend in, and how I am never one to protest or push back or admit so openly what my morals are, and to whom my heart belongs. I, too, am part of the rebellion, the mockery, the pride, all the ways in which we, fleeting created beings, rise against the immortal and immutable Creator, make gods of ourselves, our talents, our opinions, our identities, our deeply-etched ideologies—gods that are trivial and imperfect and temporal and so frequently altered at will (which should point to its fickle and untrusting nature). Our god-carving and imaging drive is a hopeless attempt that C.S. Lewis describes as “the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
If I could, I would say I have found the sweetest and greatest treasure and it is the gift of salvation, the knowledge of a loving and supreme God. I am thankful it is the absolute truth I cannot shake off or deny, and cannot exist outside of. And the good news is, it is true for you too, if you would believe (I pray so!). God loves you and wants all of you. He created you and I’m pretty sure that makes Him the best man there is to know you intimately and love you unconditionally. You can come to Him as you are—blemish and all. He wants to walk with you, live inside of you, and give you a new heart, a new name, and for His glory. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). All of life starts and ends with Him, what could possibly be more meaningful outside of Him? I love these words by Lewis: “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” If you’re on the verge of surrender (in a world that insists on human power and control and intellect), I hope and pray that you plunge yourself all the way into the kind of yielding that gives life when you lay it down, that fills your hands when you release your clenched fist, the kind of surrender that meets you exactly where you are and at your deepest need. Sweeter mysteries and blessings await, and a more purposeful and full life is assured (not perfect by any means, but fulfilling indeed). The best part is, you never once have to walk alone; you’ve got yourself a Savior and a friend for life—nothing better than this, if you ask me. Lean in.
