Facing the Right Direction
Our youngest daughter, Eden, has this thing she says when she gets angry.
She’s always been a super easy-going child, but now she’s six and, understandably, has grown into more opinions. While she’s still quite amiable, one thing really sets her off. Her number one trigger is a personal correction. Let me give you an example.
I pick Eden up from school in the carline. She buckles up and tells me about an incident on the playground. She and a friend found a piece of plastic on the mulch and threw it over the fence. She mentions it in passing, but I ask one question and then another. Soon enough, I realized that Eden and her friend had found someone’s Croc Jibbitz (a piece of rubber molded into a shape or character that attaches to a Croc shoe) and thrown it over the fence. The more questions I ask, the fuzzier the story becomes (Did you know who the Jibbitz belonged to? Why were you throwing it over the fence?) until I finally piece together that a teacher had to retrieve the Jibbitz from the other side of the fence and get it back to its rightful owner.
And then the blame started: it was all the friend’s idea, of course, and Eden just watched. Mmmm hmmm. I’m so sure. I began to talk to her about leadership and how we are responsible for making the right choices even if someone else isn’t. And how we should take ownership of our errors. Not to mention the age-old favorite: How would you feel if someone threw something of yours over the fence?
She looked at me in the rearview mirror and started crying. With tears and anger, she yelled, Stop talking to me! I don’t want to see your face!
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard these words spewing from my angelic 6-year-old’s mouth. It’s a common phrase when she’s corrected. It’s not ugly sarcasm, the way we are when we mean something like, You disgust me—I don’t want to see your face.
No, she means it literally: Stop looking at me.
And it’s almost always because she’s ashamed.
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This past May, when I was in and out of the emergency room with what we later discovered was a failing liver, our friend Buddy met us there one evening. We were still seeking answers, and everything was rapidly falling apart. My happy, healthy year with No Evidence of Disease seemed strewn about me like shards of glass on the cold linoleum floor. I lay in a hospital gown on a gurney in a teeny, tiny holding room of the ER when Buddy walked in.
Buddy is a character: his bushy gray mustache, like a ringmaster from a different era, curls up at the ends, and his clear, bespectacled eyes are keen and intuitive. He is warm and inviting but also sharp and sometimes intrusive. I think it’s fair to say he’s intentionally intrusive. He curses at the right times—when it’s the best word—and asks prying questions that move beyond standard societal niceties. Buddy doesn’t seem to care about many things the rest of us care about. Buddy cares about your soul.
He greeted me with a smile and informed me that Ty had just gone upstairs to the record office and would be back down soon with my liver biopsy results. He told me that he and Ty had been talking in the waiting room for a while, Ty catching him up on everything that was unraveling so quickly.
He sat at the foot of my bed. He was quiet. I was quiet. We silently communed in this curious place, this in-between place of not-knowing and knowing.
Then he spoke. What I love about Ty, he said, is that he always faces the right direction.
What do you mean, I asked?
He turned to look at me. He faces God, Sarah.
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I recently reminded that in Hebrews chapter eleven, what many Christians lovingly call The Hall of Faith, Joseph is acknowledged for giving directions about what to do with his bones upon his death.
By faith, Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones. -Hebrews 11:22
What makes this peculiar is that Joseph had a lifetime of impossible situations and achievements: prophetic dreams that came true, sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused of sexually assaulting his boss’s wife, imprisoned for years, promised release, and then forgotten about and left to rot in jail. Then, more prophetic dreams and a rise to power in the Egyptian court which led to his heroic plan, saving an entire region from impending famine. Oh!—Not to mention his almost impossible-to-believe forgiveness and reconciliation with those very shameful brothers who sold him out at the start.
None of his hardship is commended in the Hall of Faith. It’s just one line about some dusty old bones. How odd.
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What if our greatest moments are not what we think they are?
We put stock in achievement: we are American, after all! Work hard, dream big, and shoot for the moon. Whether it’s career, motherhood, or religion, we collectively believe that with grit and determination, we can change lives, our kids, our marriage, our bodies, and even the world.
And then it all falls short. We fall short. The business takes a frightening downturn; the school keeps calling about your kid—the problem child; your marriage unravels. Even the open line to God seems blocked.
I wonder if our great moments aren’t the top-of-the-mountain accomplishments but the sad valley seasons. When you’re angry and confused, you choose to face the right direction, even though you’re mad, especially when you’re mad.
Maybe it’s as simple as driving down the interstate on your morning commute, and the sunrise makes your heart swell. At that moment, you whisper thank you because, for a brief time in space, your soul recognizes its true place and home, a beauty beyond your imagination, regardless of your circumstances.
Because, as Saint Augustine prayed in the confessions:
You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
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I have been noodling this post for a long time. It was half-baked, but as many writers have experienced, I knew that once I started, the thoughts would solidify. But I couldn’t bring myself to write it. I kept putting it off, finding excuses, avoiding my laptop.
The days passed and became weeks. And now it’s been two months since I last wrote.
Finally, I acknowledged the truth. As author, theologian, and Stage 4 cancer survivor Kate Bowler says, It is my great privilege not to lie to you.
I wasn’t writing about facing God because I wasn’t doing it.
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People sometimes tell me that they admire my faith. It is a great kindness and honor to hear that my writing has been shared and thereby encouraged people in their own confusion and uncertainty. I have attempted to be transparent about questions of faith, community, and relationships—matters of the heart in the midst of suffering, but I want to be clear that I am no solid rock.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2020, meaning it’s been over three years since I began walking this out. Some seasons have been better than others; some days are better than others. Sometimes news is good; sometimes news is terrible. Three years later, I still have cancer. But then again, I’m also still alive.
As I told my dear friend recently, I’m weary of being weary.
I often feel the divine tug:
Put your things down and visit with me, He says.
I’m swamped today, I say.
I’m here waiting for you. I miss you, He says.
I’m too sad today, I say.
Bring your sadness to me, He says. I’m sad with you.
I’m mad at you, I say. I don’t think I want to talk to you.
I know, He says. I’m glad you’re finally admitting it.
Bring your anger to me—I can handle it.
I say nothing.
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Last week, I had a very heavy day. My beleaguered body was getting the best of me, with both arms wrapped like stiff mummies due to a lymphedema flair up. We heard disappointing news from dear friends, and I held their sadness close to my heart. Our puppy, Penny, apparently had a bladder infection, so she was peeing all over the house, even more than a typical puppy pees in the house. I was physically and emotionally on edge.
Ding!—a text notification. I read and re-read the message. It was from one of my daughters with news that sent me immediately into Full Mama Bear Mode. My blood boiled. I was a steaming, hissing hot kettle of water, and I couldn’t calm myself down. I paced the kitchen and got angrier by the minute, ready to go guns-blazing to defend them and their integrity.
I’m intentionally vague because the exact situation isn’t essential to the story, but my heart posture is.
I talked to myself, standing in my kitchen: Breathe, Sarah. Stop this. Calm yourself. But I couldn’t; I was too angry. I walked into another room, grabbed a small book of prayers I’ve loved for many years, and opened to any page.
Sitting on my sofa, I inhaled, exhaled, and began to read aloud from Scottish Theologian John Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer, written in 1936. Tears soaked my face as I slowly and carefully directed the words at the Lord aloud. I brought my heart, my whole, honest heart: my anger, sadness, and weariness to Him.
It felt like I was home again.
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Almighty God, in this hour of quiet, I seek communion with you. I want to turn away from the worry and fever of today, from the world’s jarring noises, from the blame of other people, from the confused thoughts of my own heart, and instead seek the quietness of your presence.
Dear Father, I am content to leave my life in your hands, knowing that you have counted every hair of my head. I am content to give over my will to yours, believing I can find in you a righteousness, an integrity, that I could never have obtained on my own. I am content to leave all my loved ones in your care, believing that your love for them is greater than mine. I am content to leave in your hands the cause of truth and justice and the coming of your kingdom, believing that my passion for them is just a feeble shadow of your steady purpose.
Amen.
Well, I couldn’t have said it better myself, Reverend Baillie.
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Remember Joseph and his directions about what to do with his bones? He wasn’t just being weird about where he wanted to be buried. He was remembering God’s promises. He knew that one day, God would complete what He started. God told his people that they would inherit the Promised Land, and Joseph believed it with so much certainty that it was his deathbed wish: take my bones with you when you go.
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Psalm 34 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. I have it underlined and highlighted, with notes and dates inked around certain sections.
Verse 5 seems particularly appropriate to close us out:
Those who look to Him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
I find comfort in this. I’m more like Eden than I think. She cries and yells, I don’t want to see your face. I withdraw and turn my face away from the one Person that matters, not out of shame but dissatisfaction. He is able. He is good. He is not doing what I want him to.
When news is happy and when it’s not; when things feel good and when they don’t; when we wait—living in that uncomfortable place of in-between, we are invited to face the right direction.
Let’s say yes to that invitation. It is the place to start. It’s also the place to end, and it’s every place in between.
