The question hovers low, over and around my thoughts,
dusting gratitude and contentment with the subtle grey hue of bitterness. One minute, this question gently shakes
the peace that has found me with a slow and steady rock, and the very next, it
plows through with reckless abandon.
I stand alone and these two words join me on either side, taunting and
torturing, persistent in the pursuit to squelch my quest for healing. Or I stand among many, looking around at
everyone else whose toes appear to have merely dipped in pain’s wading waters,
while I wonder if I will sink or swim, fully immersed in suffering’s great
sea. Alone or among, the question
follows me like a dark shadow and precedes me like a trail that I know leads
nowhere. I rack my brain to think of what I did that was so wrong or whom I
could have hurt so deeply that I would deserve such pain. For I am desperate to find an answer to
my own futile question. “Why me?”
While “Why me?” hovers low, another thought weaves hope
through the grey. What if it is
true; that God so loved this world that He stepped away from wholeness and into
brokenness, to save me from sinking in suffering’s sea? I wallow in wondering why others dance
in light as I drown in dark, and what if this God Man chose dark over light
because He first chose me? Could it be that He stretched out divine and human
arms to be pierced by the nails that I hammer with bitterness, just so that I
might taste the love in His blood tears?
What if, even as I whitewash my faith with a question that I was never
meant to answer, He stains it red with my name on His holy lips? If all of this
is true, then I can rack my brain to think of one good thing that I have done to
deserve such Love. But when I see
this Man, this Mystery, choosing me and my pain above the perfect peace of
heaven, I can only fall to my knees, bathed in humility, cleansed from
bitterness. It is here on the
ground, with my eyes on this Man, that I ask the question to which Grace is the
only answer, “Oh Lord, why me?”
