Tony Woodlief | Author

On feeling Godforsaken

Some of you might like my meditation on what Good Friday means to the parent of a dead child. Here’s an excerpt:

“It is a great mystery to me, how God can know what it means to be forsaken, and because he is three-in-one, know also how it is to look on your dying child, hear the breath rattle in his deflating lungs, smell the shit running down his legs, see him strain to find your face, the only sight that will comfort him, your face, which is denied him in this moment of greatest need, because his eyes and this darkening world itself have failed him.

After my daughter died, people tried to comfort me by pointing to the fruits of her suffering. My own mother came to faith, she said, in the funeral home. My pastor took my mother into a side room and when she came out she wept and told me she’d accepted Christ as her savior. So much good, people said. Your daughter accomplished so much through her suffering.

I suppose that fruit is good but this is not a deal I would have made. I am weak and I miss her and you’d think a hole running through you would be light as air but it’s such a heavy load sometimes.”

You can read the rest here.

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