Good Friday Reflections 2023
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I have spent most of the last eight-and-a-half years of infertility and loss asking this question.
Now, I want to be careful to say, when reading my own story against Scripture, that I know nothing of the state-sanctioned violence of the Good Friday story. I know nothing of the oppression of Empire. My life, even in its struggle is so privileged: I just said to a nurse this week that if we were in not just another time but in another state without mandated fertility coverage, we would not have been able to have any living children for IVF would not have been possible. There are people throughout the world today who still experience real abuse, terror, and crucifixion, and I am not them. I will always read my story alongside Scripture, and will encourage others to do the same, but we must acknowledge the divergences as well.
So maybe you have also felt forsaken and alone.
The story of Jesus' crucifixion does not answer this question. God doesn't reassure him or rebuke him. He feels forsaken in Matthew and Mark's gospels, and then he dies. We can skip ahead to the resurrection, but most of us who feel forsaken are still waiting on resurrection ourselves. The forsakenness feels more real than the new life. In fact, I've often felt like the forsakenness *is* the new reality of my life. But therein lies the grace, or maybe the paradox where grace is possible? We are not alone in our forsakenness. For even Christ felt abandoned. Even in feeling alone, we are not.
Grief and pain are terribly lonely. I have half-written pieces about other IVF moms who have struggled like I have but can name their children in utero while I'm still picking out names based on if the baby is born dead or if the baby is born alive. I've had other people in infertility accuse me of playing the grief olympics even though it is just a fact that it is better to bring home a living child, even with all the struggles of prematurity, than it is bringing home and urn with your child's ashes in it. But even in the uniqueness of our struggles, opening up about our sorrows, and sitting with our sorrows *together,* can be healing.
May you find that community with whom you can share your sorrows.
*Picture of our Good Friday worship tonight where we laid our sorrows at the cross.
