The hand is opening as I ask this question;
Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens to us who have died to live
It’s unfair
Lyrics to ‘Held’ By Nathalie Grant. (With one edit for personal testimony)
Five months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling
Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens to us who have died to live
It’s unfair
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell, we’d be held
This hand is bitterness
We wanna taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow
The wise hand opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it…
I realise that what has also been torn from my life is a deception. A personal human friendship is so different. If you think your friend is trustworthy, or even a professional who is also a stranger, there are so many things we assume; we agree on The Sanctity of Individual Lives. The duty to protect and do all we can to do that, especially for the vulnerable is hardwired in our conscience. We would, wouldn’t we? The fireman hero who risks his life to pull a child from a burning building would not be a hero if he stood outside and watched it burn, hose switched off, fire-resistant clothing donned, looking at his watch and saying, Oh well, too late, my shift is over. That it not heroic. There’s no middle ground. He tries and is a hero, or he doesn’t and is a disgrace.
The nursery worker, greeting a mother leaving her 8 month old on her first morning back at work, assures her they will take care of her precious bundle of joy. If baby is returned safely to Mum at the end of the day, they have done only what they are expected to have done. No medals, just a small wage. If the baby suffers any harm, they are investigated and there’s publicity, outrage and punitive stabs at justice, if any neglect is proven.
I left my weeks old baby in her big carriage pram, once, over 30 years ago, for a few minutes outside a small shop. It was just customary to do that years ago, while mothers shopped. We didn’t all have baby carriers, and shops were not designed to cater for buggies, less still, prams. I came back out of the shop, and saw my baby still sleeping peacefully. I smiled questioningly at the kind looking elderly lady whose hand was lowered over my precious child and I hoped she was kind! Of course, she was! She was a normal human being, doing a small, brave thing. She explained that she had removed the little bib from around my baby’s neck. She had heard of a baby strangled on its bib, and so had a little part-time mission to warn mothers not to use bibs except during feeding, and then to take them off. Better to wash the bedding and the cardigans and baby-grows than to find using the little bib was a fatal mistake. Oh, how I agreed and thanked her! I heeded her warning and never left my baby with a bib on again. Would just walking by have made her evil? I bet I would have just walked by. She actively loved. Risked offending me for my baby’s sake, so how on earth could I be offended?
Another time, my loved ones asked a friend to take care of their little son. He knew them well, and loved them dearly including their little son and he is always there when they call him. But they found out he didn’t protect their little son’s life, but was there with them as their baby died. Was he a hero or a disgrace? I’ve been struggling with trusting that friend, but maybe expectations were all wrong. Maybe the questions should have been, What are the friend’s expectations and what kind of friend is he?
The answers to those I am still pondering, but he is not made in the image of a human friend, otherwise I’d dismiss him from my life as callous, cruel and totally unworthy of trust. He didn’t walk by. He’s never walked away. In fact he’s always with them knowing their pain and loss was the most terrible loss imaginable. He’s experienced it for himself. He knows it happens all over the world. So many tragedies. Like earthquakes causing mudslides crashing through and inundating whole villages full of innocent and defenceless people. Fires, diseases, wars, political treachery, apathy and indifference to others’ suffering and exploitation, torture chambers, prisons are haunted by his presence. Hopelessly overloaded dinghies full of refugees fleeing war zones, laid on by explotative people-traffickers epitomse the depth of our brokenness. The sweet old lady removing a bib is made in the same image as the friend who is there as babies die, as genocides happen, as people are sold for less than the price of a sparrow, as the earth itself rends assunder, weeping its molten heart out. A loveless soul is a spiritual zombie at best, a cynical monster at worst, yet, who is also made in that sacred image.There are no promises that this friend will change what is set in motion in this broken world, in our broken lives. The threshold of his power is the doorstep of our hearts where we must decide whether we allow ourselves to trust him anyway. Then he will rescue our hearts and promise never to leave us or forsake us, and to acknowledge us as his friends. He will live up to his name; Immanuel.
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