Ask the (35) questions that have no answers: Practice Resurrection Stories
Have you heard of the phenomenon known as “vulnerability hangover”? I attribute the perfectly descriptive phrase to my sister Kaley who first shared it with me. I think she heard it from Brené Brown. I’ve experienced this sort of hangover many times in my life, but sharing the last two Stories with you brought on a particularly severe case. Thanks for your companionship in the Stories as well as in the pauses between. (As a reminder: here’s a description of my current Stories series.)
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
A list of 35 generational questions that have no answer in my life (to date):
What modern medicine could’ve kept my maternal great-grandmother from dying when my grandmother was still a baby?
What factors did my maternal great-grandfather consider when he chose his second wife? How did his own chronic illness impact this decision?
Why did my maternal grandmother’s father take her away from her two younger sisters and give her to a stranger when she was 11 years old? (I know the family legend reason: the new stepmother didn’t like her, but like how did his heart actually function to make that possible?)
For what possible reason did God allow my maternal grandmother’s foster father to die in a tragic vehicular accident shortly after he and his wife took my grandmother into their home?
In what way was my abandoned grandmother an answer to prayer for her foster parents? How did the fact that my grandmother’s foster mother introduced her to Jesus bring resurrection life into the mental and emotional trauma my grandmother experienced and that perpetuated through the family line? Did the resurrection eclipse the suffering? (Note: my grandmother would give a hearty YES to this question. And said so to all of us before she died.)
What modern medicine could’ve kept my maternal grandmother’s husband (my grandfather) from dying when he was 42 years old?
Why did God allow my maternal grandfather to die when he was sitting in the living room with my 9-year-old mother?
Put another way: Why didn’t God shield my mother from the trauma of watching her father die suddenly - with no warning - while he was sitting right next to her in the living room helping her plan a birthday party for her little sister?
How did God feel about my maternal grandmother becoming a young widow with five daughters, no income, and not enough money to keep their family home? (Here’s a Lament Story my mom wrote about this season in her life in which my grandmother had to leave her older daughters to raise her younger daughters so she could go to school.)
Why does anyone ever have to lose their house? Why do some people have enough money to keep a house and some people don’t?
What would my maternal grandfather have done with his ambitious list of vocational dreams if he’d lived into old age?
Why do some people die young when younger people still very much need them to stay alive?
What were the factors that led both my paternal great-grandfathers to drink so much alcohol that they hurt or abandon their families? How did their service in WWI impact their mental and emotional health?
How did God decide to let my paternal grandparents be healed from some of their most wounded generational cycles (i.e., alcoholism) and not from others (i.e., other forms of mental illness and social anxieties)?
What key turned the lock of faith for my paternal grandmother? She told us it was her crippling anxiety. Was her decision to choose a personal relationship with Jesus actually better than the electro-shock therapy option that her friend suggested? (Note: She would shout YES. And she did often, just before singing us the chorus “Come into my heart, Lord Jesus”.) Could this have been a both/and decision rather than an either/or?
Why did my paternal great-grandmother allow her live-in boyfriends to hurt my paternal grandfather? Was the cost worth the benefit? (I have no idea how she’d answer this question because she was kind of a crotchety old lady by the time I knew her. She did, however, crochet lovely afghans.)
How was God offering resurrection when my paternal grandfather had to give up high school to make an income because his father spent all the money in the neighborhood tavern? In what ways did the benefactor/patron economy of the shoe factories in our hometown help or harm my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations? (Generations of grandparents for both Brian and me earned their living at those shoe factories.)
Why did God allow my paternal grandfather to suffer so much silenced brokenness? How did his experience as a 19-year-old U.S. soldier sent to clean up Hiroshima just after the bomb impact his emotional and mental health?
How did God decide which of my paternal grandfather’s grandchildren would experience the dark side of his brokenness and which to experience only the light? To what extent was my grandmother aware of this dichotomy?
How did my grandfather feel on the late night he called my father and his other two children to come to his house to hear his personal decision to follow Jesus? What was God’s role in the timing of my grandfather being fired from his janitorial job on the same day as his decision to choose faith?
What role did my grandmother play in the preceding order of events?
What made God choose my grandparents’ generation to introduce himself so tangibly? Why not sooner? (Thank you, God, it wasn’t later!)
What spark of generational prayer lit the flame of my father’s heart for the Church? Why did that love for the Church cost him and his family so much peace? Was the cost worth the reward? (I suspect he’d say YES! I have to ask him soon.) How is it possible that all of his children carry a deep love and commitment to the same Church that provoked so much disruption, sacrifice, and grief in our childhood?
How did my mother’s childhood trauma connect with 19 years of unrelenting depression that began shortly after she married my father? How was it possible that, in spite of the depressive weight, my mother was able to function so skillfully in making celebrations a normal part of my childhood memories? If the two somehow worked together, was the joy worth the suffering (I think she might say YES! I will ask her soon.)
Why did God allow me as a young girl to discover the details of my mother’s depressed ideations? He could’ve blocked that from my view. Why didn’t he?
How did God decide the right time to allow my mother to come out from under the darkness of unrelenting depression? Why didn’t He do that sooner - like when I still lived at home with my mother? How did the breath of resurrection begin to open my own heart even though I had left home to begin my own family?
How did God feel about me giving birth to my first child while I was 20 years old and carrying so much unresolved grief and trauma? How did my private battle against depression help my children? How did the privacy and the lack of understanding hurt them? How will God continue to bring mental and emotional healing to my children and grandchildren?
How did God feel about me marrying Brian when he was 20 years old and still carrying so much unresolved grief and trauma from his own family? In what ways did the ignorance of young marriage help or harm us and our children? In what ways did it bind our hearts together stronger? Was the resurrection worth the suffering? (In case you’ve never asked us, both Brian and I would give a hearty YES. You’d have to ask my kids for their own answers. May God bless them as they do.)
Why doesn’t faith - personal and communal - always translate into mental, emotional, and physical well-being? Why does it for some more than for others?
How will the reality of Jesus’ resurrection continue to form my life, my children’s lives, and my grandchildren’s lives? How much of that will God allow me to see in my own lifetime? How much will my capacity to trust His goodness continue to grow?
Lord, hear my questions and let me put my trust in you, the keeper of my heart.
Amen.