I Lost A Bet

On 28 April 2002, I was baptised.

On 28 April 2015, I lost my faith.

No, I do not have the dates mixed up.

You've all heard the story; I rehash it every year. How my cousin suddenly had an asthma attack and was taken to hospital where she died. I entered into the story between the hospital and the death when my aunt called and told us the situation and told us to pray. We did pray as a family that night, collectively and individually. I vividly remember saying to God, "If You love me, let her live."

In the years since then, I've had so many people -- pastors, student theologians, Bible study leaders, fellow Bible college students, even people who no longer adhere to the Christian faith -- tell me how badly my theology was flawed that night. They tell me how ridiculous it was for me to base my entire hope and faith into one miracle. They tell me it was wrong for me to hinge His love for me on one prayer, on one human life.

I can follow where they're coming from, but I cannot understand their logic.

If God really is as great as they say He is, why then can't I do that? If God is capable of using a donkey to accomplish His purposes, why can't He reinflate dying lungs? Even modern medicine can do that nine times out of ten, why can't the God of the universe even manage that 10%? If God is so great, how is it wrong for me to bet the farm, to hinge my entire faith on one crazy possibility? Isn't that the very definition of faith? I believed so much that God loved me that I bet my cousin's life and my entire faith on it. They make entire blockbuster films on the stories of lesser bets.

Oh right -- the ones in the films usually pay off.

I made a crazy bet based on crazy faith -- the kind they begged us in youth group to have -- and lost. Yeah, yeah, maybe it was wrong to bet with God, but if He loved me -- if He really loved me -- why wouldn't He prove it? I have spent the last five years in a pit of numbness, knowing that I should love and serve and be faithful to Him, but also knowing that He was fully capable of saving my cousin and proving to me that He loved me and He did not do it. 'Ask and you shall receive,' my foot.

You know if it had been a degenerate -- somebody addicted to crack who'd gambled his entire life away and made a hobby of murdering children for twenty-five years -- God would have done it. If that 'degenerate' had pleaded for the life of his own nine-year-cousin, using the exact same wording I did, God would have done it. And it would have sold millions of books and packed out arenas to hear that testimony. What makes me any different? Why can't I ask the exact same thing? I'm really no less of a degenerate in my soul. Am I not evil enough for God to bother with me? Is that not 'bad enough' for me to get a prayer answered? What do I have to do? How bad do I have to be?

I've lost many people even closer to me than my cousin, but my cousin's death is the one that I keep coming back to, the one that continues to infuriate and flummox me.

I asked for one thing -- one thing. I had a hell of a lot of faith -- it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to bet my entire faith on one person's life. I didn't ask for new shoes or a better-paying job or more friends or anything frivolous. I begged for someone else's life. Is that not a noble thing to ask? All I wanted was my cousin to live, and I wanted it so badly that I exchanged my relationship with God for it.

How is that not enough? Nothing I do is ever enough for humans; I've known that for years. But they always told us God was gracious and while we would never measure up to His standard, He had this really great thing called 'mercy' because He loved us SOOOOOOOO much. I bet a hell of a lot on that mercy and that love that night.

And it failed me.

The Sweetest Thing

I read a writing prompt this morning -- something about the sweetest thing your significant other has ever done for you.

At first I thought of all the little cumulative sweet things my fiancé does for me -- the way he hugs me when I'm sad, how he makes me food and tea (somehow he makes it perfect every time?), how he will turn up the thermostat whenever I visit because I'm always cold (even though he's always hot) and always offers me a blanket just in case.

But then I thought of this past summer.

We met in mid-June and hit it off fairly quickly. On 20th July, we officially started dating. Also in July, I began a job delivering newspapers.

It was the single most soul-draining thing I have ever done in my life, and I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in the performing arts from a Christian college (read: where you have to fake like everything is 100% okay 100% of the time). I would leave the house at 12.30am, pick up my papers from the drop location whenever they deigned to bring them (it was supposed to be 1am but was sometimes as late as four), and then drive around the richest (and hilliest) neighbourhood in town in the dark, searching in vain for house numbers. I delivered roughly 120 papers a night for 21 cents each (yes, in 2019 in a first-world country). I was spending $20 on gas every single night to accomplish this feat. I made only enough money to pay my (absurdly cheap) rent and put gas in my vehicle -- I had long stopped eating by this point, which worked in my favour as there wasn't enough money left for food anyway.

Last year, you may remember me lamenting how nobody ever cares about my birthday. I had originally planned to go visit my now-fiancé on my birthday last year, but then he found out he was supposed to be at a major out-of-province family function that weekend and they had to leave that day. As I mentioned in my blog post from that week, I was devastated. I was too far away from my family to make a day trip and still manage to work that night and nearly all of my friends were in Saskatchewan (or farther). I was facing the very real prospect of being alone on my birthday. We planned for me to come visit Jacob the day before my birthday so I could see him at least close to my birthday (the way I've always had to settle for social things surrounding my birthday).

Then, on 30 July (my birthday is the second), the drop supervisor at my job -- ordinarily a huggy, demonstrative person -- began showing me a little more affection than was appropriate in a workplace setting. He began literally pulling me into hugs and then kissed me without asking. I was too shocked to say anything to him, but the next day (31st), I texted Jacob (and my boss) about it.

My boss didn't get back to me (at least not till after my shift started). I still felt unsafe, and since Jacob couldn't drive out directly that night, I gave him the drop address and contact info for my boss and my parents, dressed in as many layers as I could stand in southern Alberta in late July (to hinder any moves my supervisor might try to make), and, as I approached the drop site, called Jacob, connected my Apple earbuds and put my phone -- with the line still open -- in my pocket and ran the cord under my shirt, leaving the earbuds (including the microphone) hanging over my collar so he could hear everything that happened. The agreement was if I hung up for any reason without giving a reason or saying goodbye to him, he would call the police.

What happened that night is a completely different story (which will probably show up on this blog eventually as it's a great story), but suffice to say, the next day -- 1 August -- when I went to visit him, I was still unsettled about the whole situation. I had not even been working that job one month, but I was already planning on quitting.

We had dinner with his parents that night, and over the course of dinner, Jacob mentioned that he was thinking of coming with me to work that night to make sure my supervisor didn't try anything. This was the first I'd heard about this plan, but I was pleasantly surprised at the prospect. It was arranged that he would stay the night after my shift finished with his grandmother, as she lived significantly closer to where I was living and his parents were going to be picking her up the next morning on the way to the family gathering anyway.

So at 11.30pm we set out in my van, talking and playing music. At one point somewhere on Highway 21, my phone dinged.

"Who's that?" I said, as I often do whenever I hear a phone (any phone, much to the annoyance of everyone I've ever lived with).

He looked and said it was my best friend.

"Oh, what does she want?" I asked.

"You should know," he said. "Guess."

"It's J, it could be literally anything," I said.

"What time is it?"

I glanced down at the clock. "12.12. Why?"

"What day is it?" he asked.

I opened my mouth to say 'Thursday, why?' but it suddenly dawned on me. August second. My birthday. I had (somewhat intentionally) forgotten about it.

He saw the realisation dawn on my face and said, "Why do you think I'm here?"

It took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to cry.

I had thought he was just coming along to make sure I was safe -- which is sweet enough -- but it turned out he had been planning for days to come along with me to work after my visit, just so he would be with me for at least a couple hours on my birthday because he knew how much I wanted to be with someone that day.

He stayed to the side and kept an eye on things at the drop, helped me deliver the papers, and then we ate breakfast at 4.30am in an A&W parking lot as the sun rose behind us. He apologised for not having a gift for me, but the sacrifice he made to spend just a few hours with me meant more than anything he could ever have paid for.

Day 21

I feel useless -- again.

I was laid off from my job (due to the virus) after working only three weeks. Three weeks of feeling like a human being with something to give to the world. Three weeks of being finally free from the vice-grip of 'how am I going to pay for this wedding?' Three weeks of sweet freedom from the despair that maybe I actually am unhireable for some unknown reason.

As an artist, I feel a certain responsibility to the public in general. Historically, in times like these -- when all the world seems upended and topsy-turvy -- it falls to the artists to make the Herculean effort to find and present hope to society. It's our job to bring encourage flagging morale and point to the hope of rescue, of a brighter day.

What then, of those artists like me who are drowning in it themselves and can't find it either?

Well... those ones are failures.

So I'm a failure. Again.

I hate it. It never gets easier to be the failure. I hate it so much.

Death

Written 27 January 2020, 10.22pm.

All trauma can be escaped, on some level.

All trauma except the trauma of death.

And that is the one that consistently dogs me.

With divorce or family splits, both parties are alive and there is always hope (however unlikely) that there might just be reconciliation one day. With abuse, one can escape the abuser. It's not easy, but it's doable. With health issues (including mental illness), you are again still alive and there is the hope that one day a treatment will be found that can help you. With unemployment, there is always a way to beg, borrow, or even steal what you need to live. Your moral code may protest it, but it's there. Plus there is always a thin hope of economic improvement.

There is always hope -- even the thinnest strand of it -- if you can just hold on to it. There is always the hope of escape, one day.

Except in death.

Death comes and cannot be escaped. When someone close to you dies, you can't undo it. You can't go back and say sorry and ask forgiveness. You can't re-see them one last time. You can't send them an email with all the words you wanted to say.

Death causes trauma. Traumatic situations can be escaped... except for death. Death is the one that we cannot choose and we cannot run away from. We can't control it. It comes for our loved us and we are powerless in the face of it. You can throw money or hugs or kind words at literally anything else and it helps, even the tiniest bit. It may not fix the problem, but it provides even the most fleeting of respites.

I have spent so many years trying to build up walls against things that will cause me harm. I don't get close enough to people for them to abuse me anymore. I live on $60 a week to offset my unemployment and I literally beg for that amount from those lucky enough to still have jobs. I sleep most days, waiting in a half-dreamt haze for the day when there is a treatment for my depression. I have distanced myself from my family to avoid the fallout when they -- inevitably, it seems -- split.

But I can't shelter myself from death. The old and sick live, the young and healthy die. It traumatises me every single time, and I can't cushion it and I can't get away from it and there is no hope. There is no hope that they will suddenly come around and start breathing again. There is no hope that suddenly their heart will start up again. Christians will insist that 'death is NOT the end!!!!!!!! *8 million sickeningly sugary happy emojis and heart-eyes*' but the fact is that once a person dies, all hope is gone. Even if they are in heaven -- the fact remains that there is no hope here. There is nothing to cushion the blow to my staggering heart. You never know who's next, and you never know when it will be. There is no preparation. There is no going back. There is no making the best of it. They are gone, and you are broken. You are at the mercy of God, or Death, or Fate, or whatever the hell you want to call it. And Death has no mercy. There are days when it seems God doesn't either. They call Him a merciful God, but then why doesn't He stop the never-ending parade of meaningless deaths when I plead and beg for Him to stop it and let my heart breathe for just one day?

We can't control God and we can't control Death. Both seem hell-bent on destroying me, burying me alive under the shards of my shattered heart. I breathe them in and they pierce my lungs.

Even on days when nobody close to you actually dies, the trauma is there now. It never goes away. Your heart rate jumps at the sound of every text alert, wondering who it was this time. You constantly run through every person you've ever met in your mind, freaking out most over those who seem fine and are happy and healthy because those are always the ones that go first and those are always the hardest ones to predict and 'recover' from. Every time someone posts something on Facebook or Instagram, you think 'is this their last post?' There is no hope that everyone will be safe and alive at the end of today. You can only hold onto what remains of your tattered heart with whitened knuckles and beg the sky for mercy today... and hope that God cares enough about you to give you one day off.

But even then, that's not a sure thing. You hope He gives you rest, like He promised, but rest is not a sure thing when death is involved. It's never a certainty. And somehow death still blindsides you every time. There's always one person you forgot to worry about, and it's always that person who dies unexpectedly.

There is no escape. There is no hope of escape. There is no choice. And it's so stupid and it's so unfair. Why do I have to endure seven deaths in four years and other people go to maybe three funerals in their entire lives? Why aren't the numbers more even? Why is it always the people that I know and love, seemingly at the exclusion of all others?

When I was a young teen, I used to think I was God's punching bag. That's literally how I referred to myself in my writings from that time. In my late teens and early twenties, I began to see that label as somewhat melodramatic. But now I'm starting to wonder if eleven-year-old Kate wasn't on to something after all. After all, if God is a God of mercy, and I beg for mercy, for respite from everyone around me dying, and the dying doesn't stop, does it mean God has been misrepresented and painted as merciful when He is not, or does it mean I am just the 'chosen one' -- the punching bag, the one who absorbs His anger at everyone else whether I like it or not so that He might show them His famous mercy?

This is enough. I am not only crying uncle, I am screaming uncle at the top of my shredded lungs. Mercy, mercy.

Please.