Metamorphosis

Earlier this month we got one of those phone calls that splits a year into Before and After. I can't tell you much at all about what's going on but I can tell you this: it's not good. No one is dying, but we're dealing with something serious.

In the first week the weight of the news was like a physical burden. It hurt to swallow; it hurt to take a deep breath. It took me hours to fall asleep, and as soon as I woke up I would remember, and feel the weight settle onto me again. "I haven't felt like this since the summer of 1995," I said to myself.

In the summer of 1995 I miscarried my first baby and it crushed me. It was the first time I had ever prayed with my whole heart for something that seemed good and right, only to learn that sometimes the most wholehearted prayers for good and right outcomes do not receive the answer one might wish. At the lowest point in those weeks after the miscarriage I went to Mass, hoping to find some comfort. Instead I heard this gospel: Before you build a tower, count the cost. 

At the time I found it lacerating. I knew that God was saying to me, "Jamie, every gift I give you is only yours for a season. It is not for you to determine the length of the season." I quailed at the prospect of all the losses that might lie ahead, all the other gifts God might ask me to return with open hands. 

It was a bitter lesson, but the years have taught me to hear a gentler message in that gospel. I have learned that the Lord is with us in our suffering-- sometimes powerfully, palpably, sometimes quietly, patiently. I have learned that grace abounds in unexpected places. Of the 159 Sunday gospel readings in the lectionary, this is the one that says to me most clearly, "I am with you in the hard spots. In the places where you see catastrophe, I see the raw materials for something beautiful." How strange, and how fitting, for it to be the gospel we heard on our first Sunday in After.

After Mass that day I was trying to explain to the kids what it meant to me. "I promise you," I told them, "that this will all seem much less awful in 24 years!"

From the moment I thought about writing this blog post I knew I would call it "Metamorphosis." At first it was because we feel as if we've fallen headlong into a Kafka novel. A few weeks later I am seeing a gentler message there, too: suffering transforms us, if we let it. This is not a path we would have chosen to walk, but we are moving forward anyway. Please pray for us.