Bitter, better, and meeting the God who carried the cross.

Better not bitter. I heard that repeated as the tag line to a homily. Let the crosses that are part of the human condition make you better not bitter. Carry your cross in love for Christ who carried His. Hit me wrong. Part of the human condition is to feel bitterness. Bitterness will come to everyone’s life, it must be acknowledged, allowed to flow through and out of us. Listen to the poignant raw cry of Job that speaks to bitterness:

So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been told of for me. If in bed I say, “when shall I arise?” Then the night drags on: I am filled with restlessness until the dawn. My flesh is clothed with worms and scabs; my skin cracks and festers; My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again. My own utterance I will not restrain; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.    (Book of Job 7:3-7, 11)

Job is utterly human, blindingly honest, the above might repulse some, but I read it and say “yes, I know.”

We were not prepared for the cross of Justin’s death. Our back and shoulders not hardened or muscled, our endurance not built up to endure the reality of living without him. His death slammed us to the ground, the weight of that cross crushes the air out of you. We rise a bit, we stagger, and we fall hard. We feel bitterness, we can’t see for the mud and tears how this is to make us better.

I confessed to a very wise, older priest that I didn’t recognize God anymore, or His church. He said of course not, because now you are meeting the God who carried the cross. I am still turning that over in my head.  I think about the God who carried the cross. Bloody, filthy, body in pain…He falls under the weight of His cross. I am convinced that He didn’t have to fall, He fell to show us that we would fall and that it is okay to fall, to crash down, to be so nauseated and exhausted that we just lay there, breathing blood and spit, choking on tears. If we can open our eyes, we see His, and there is no condemnation, He doesn’t say we have failed, we see our pain mirrored in His eyes. He fell to express what no words could, what our journey would look like, messy, staggering, slow, and that we would fall more than once and that we would get up.

I have come to believe that God will lie with us in the sweat and vomit, not offended by our humanity, but drawn closer to us as we struggle to rise. We push ourselves up, but we aren’t refreshed, we rise still burdened, still tired. See that is the part that gets left out, we get up but we are still shaking. We have our feet under us, and we are moving, but it isn’t pretty. Does that mean that grace is absent? Does it make it worthless in our Father’s eyes? Or does He see His son in us? The life of grace is not lived out in clean white cotton, the life of grace is a struggle. And if we are caught in the mud and covered in filth, does that mean we aren’t faith filled, that somehow we are even suffering “wrong”?

When Mother Teresa identified the dying, their bodies crawling with maggots, with Jesus, she saw Christ, fallen, beaten, dying, and her heart broke with love. She didn’t try to fix anyone’s life, or fault them for being maggot infested, she washed them, she held them, she fed them. She too had met the God who carried the cross and sought Him out wherever He had fallen in the world.

We  slowly grow into our cross, we learn how to carry it, but sometimes when we least expect it, we fall again, as if its weight were brand new. Bitterness still comes, it washes over our bodies like a stinging wave full of sand, and it flows back out, that is life.  In order for us not to remain in bitterness, the very bitterness of life itself must be validated, and acknowledged. When our pain is embraced, somehow we can let go of the bitterness. It is not enough to simply tell someone to not let their cross make them bitter, but make them better. Life’s journey cannot be reduced to a catch phrase.

Sometimes the best thing of all is to not say anything, but instead slip your shoulder under their cross and walk a bit with them.  You can’t take their cross from them, and you don’t even have to walk the whole way with them, let them bleed out the bitterness in their soul in silent companionship. They will be better for the gift of your silence presence, and the roots of bitterness will find less soil in which to grow.