Good Friday

My Sunday School class and I have been discussing the Easter season and how Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday and then we celebrate his resurrection on Easter Sunday.  The children were very interested in talking about these days and what happened and through the course of our discussions they asked me a very good question to which I did not have the answer, "Why do we call it Good Friday when it's the day Jesus died?"  I believe in honesty and honestly I did not know that answer at the time so my  response was that I didn't know but I believed it was a very sad day because Jesus died and died so painfully.

I happened to get an answer to this question which makes sense:  Jesus' suffering and dying for all of mankind imparted the greatest gift of love and the opportunity for repentance and salvation.  It is a reminder that to find happiness we must first go through sorrow.  That goodness can emerge from suffering and even death.  I can see that and I believe to an extent, I have lived it.  I have suffered through the death of two sons, neither by choice, but both loved greatly.  I have watched them die and seen what happens in the after.  There is great opportunity to for good to emerge from such dark times.  Unlike God, I do not get to resurrect my beloved children and have them live at my side for eternity, my three days last an earthly lifetime but I live it knowing that one day when this life ends another will begin for me and my precious boys.

Losing Wyatt, Losing God

I mentioned my struggle with God earlier.  It was epic.  I did not give up hope until Wyatt's heart beat for the very last time.  I went to church, I prayed, I gave thanks.  Then it just all came tumbling down.  I would go to church and just sit there and cry.  It became so difficult I just stopped going.  Twenty-five years down the tube just like that.  Only one fragment remained.  I was angry at God but I had to keep believing in Him.  Without Him, I could not find my son, I could not imagine him being taken care of.  I could not hope to join him.  It's a dangerous precipice to question one's faith, but in my experience, a worthwhile journey.

All of the platitudes and religious viewpoints offered to me by people I believed much more knowledgeable and faithful than I was could not withstand my questions.  If you accept just one statement it sounds great and can be rationalized, but when you try to fit that statement into your entire faith and knowledge of God, it was like a bad movie when the hero mysteriously reaches for a not-there-before bazooka to kill the bad guy.  It's just not believable and leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth which sours the whole thing.

My struggle with all of these questions and my search for answers lasted at least five years.  Five years after Wyatt's birth, probably almost to the day, I found my way back to church.  After all that time I still teared up occasionally, but I continued to go.  I volunteered to teach kindergarten faith class and had made some kind of workable peace.  Then my world came crashing down again.