on a very un-Christian thought

I’d been speaking to an old friend of mine going through a very difficult pregnancy. The type that might not bode well for the future. Two or more hours of pouring out heart and soul, bitter bile, despair, anxiety, doubt. Some words traded about God’s providence. But we both meant it thin as ice, and we knew it.

A train rider later I was at an upscale sushi place (in no mood to find a more atmospherically suitable place), eyeing the menu and two girls the next table over.

It hit me right then — there was nothing beautiful about anything going on. My empty counsel, my tiredness, and my wandering eyes, incongruous given the past few hours; my friend and her woes and despair, bitterly wondering aloud at her pain and guilt. And other refuges my mind had always gone to? My mother, warm as the hearth, but with increasingly serious stomach pains; my niece, badly ill and getting no better, gasping raggedly every minute of the day; and an old flame of mine, who I’d been wondering about for years, but I’d never dared properly approach because I knew the answer already — and again my incongruously wandering eye. Nothing was beautiful. Nothing could be wondered at with a smile. Nothing but doubt and worry and lashing guilt.

But who remained beautiful yet?

It hit me again — Jesus the Son of God, who knows me more than I know myself, who loves me despite all the grievous sin. My friend might be wrestling with doubt, I might whip myself with guilt, and my dear ones might writhe with sickness, but Jesus remained beautiful, steadfast, luminous. A thing of beauty and wonder in the storm.

It was the most un-Christian thought I’d had in years.

Jesus who loves me more than I’ve sinned is not beautiful because he’s above it all, ivory-like on a plinth to be adored and gawked at; he is beautiful because he rolls with us in the mud, the blood, and the shit.

My friend worries about her pregnancy and her marriage. I won’t cheapen the peril with sprinkled apologias. But whatever happens to her, her baby, or her partner, Jesus will heal. He is there right now with her as she hurts and doubts. Doesn’t his name itself speak of saving? Don’t the scars on his hands? Something will be rescued like a treasure out of a furnace.

My mother hurts daily. But even as she ages, and even if the hurts multiply, she’s not alone. Jesus knows what it is to hurt. He is with her in it all, and he will give her days evermore — someday — when there is no more hurt.

My niece is gone now. She suffered until her final breath. But even as my voice finally broke as I did her funeral reading, even as we wondered why Jesus had allowed this at all, we know he had been there all along. He brought her through such suffering, and he was there at the end. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again — who truly is sure of such things? — but I know Jesus brought her through all the gasps, all the choking, all the writhing pain. Didn’t he writhe and choke too? Won’t he hold her close now in eternity?

And me? No one has had harsher words for my weakness, hypocrisy and arrogant presumption than myself. There is no end to it for now. My old flame has well and truly put herself out of reach. There’s no horizon through the fog of my pride and inability to let go of the perfect girl or compromise my standards (who is possibly this arrogant?), but as much as I hate myself everyday for all this, Jesus loves me more. Weak as I am, as far short of a man as I see myself, he still walks me through each day, man enough for the both of us.

That’s beautiful. All of it. Beautiful beyond ivory and plinths and wondering smiles. Beauty that is seen because of the dirt, not despite it. Beauty that saves. Beauty that speaks of a full future, not an empty present. I don’t like that beauty like this is needed. But thank God for it.