This Mother's Lament

This is a personal lament that I wrote in response to a lecture and discussion on the Psalms.

O God, Source of life, creator of every living thing, determiner of that which has breath.

How long must we wait?

By day, my son writhes in pain,
gut clutched by little hands that should be drawing pictures or building cities with blocks.

Caught by rhythmic and cyclical mystery that causes him to moan, and for me to murmur reassurances that are false, echoing through a tunnel of hollow hope.

My hands lay upon his skin, providing both of us with the comfort of the other.

By night, I lay beside him, tears streaming down my face as he fitfully sleeps.

I stretch out my hand to you and cry “Heal him. I know that you can. I know who you are. Why are you not listening and acting? What have I done to block your hearing? I preach your word, I live a life of gospel simplicity, I set aside family time when neighbors knock on the door asking for bread. It is my turn, I ask for the bread of wholeness and you have given me a stone of indifference. How long O God?”

But my cries lift with faith, only to dissipate like steam, unfelt by you.

O God, Source of life and all that breathes, I must turn to lesser gods of white coat and stethoscope. They placate me with words like “could be this”, “isn’t that”, “flu, IBS, imagination.”

But they are not around to see my son, my firstborn in anguish.

I know his imaginary pains that are given life to garner my attention.

I know the pains that diminish when a friendly face appears or ice cream is brought out. And these are not those.

Will this end in health or death? How long until we know?

O that it would be better that you were not in existence, for then my hopes and faith would not be beaten to a pulp each and every day.

But you do exist, and I do believe. So I raise my petition, my yearning, my soul to you. Please heal my son. Heal my son. Do not be far from us. Let him not lose faith in you. Let not my faith shrivel and my vocation become meaningless.

Within me, praise struggles to rise, but it is held back and I cannot let it go. It flutters inside and beside and all around, but cannot fly to full glory. It is tethered to me, waiting for you to prove yourself.

(August 1996, during a 9 month period where Turner had recurring abdominal cramps that came and went in two week cycles. The doctors speculated that it was the flu, that it was Irritable Bowel Syndrome, that he was making it up. On October 25, 1996, while doing the second shunt revision of the year, they swabbed the tubing at his belly, to find his peritoneum full of staph infection, having traveled upwards to his brain. Turner was in ICU for 16 days, as they administered antibiotics from an external shunt directly into his brain. We watched his cerebral spinal fluid fill bag after bag, because his body did not reabsorb it. Turner was 5 nearly 6, lying in a hospital bed, unable to move for the need to keep that bag perfectly aligned with his head….too high and his cerebral spinal fluid would not drain out, too low and it could drain too quickly. He went home on the 17^th day, with no more cramps. All along, God had been faithful. We knew it had been the shunt. But we listened to the empty reassurances of the gods of medicine over the heartbeat of the One True God.)