Death, Desire, and Demand

Five years ago, at the beginning of a journey on which I intended to "remake" my life, I began reading Sue Monk Kidd's The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. I embarked upon a peaceful journey into intentional living, which was something I had never really done. I spent about a year reading the book, breathing in small sections at a time, having my questions about why God squished women into tiny little box-like molds validated by similar questions posed by Sue. I asked away, trying to give my soul permission to dance.

Looking back, I am wondering if I felt as safe as I thought I did coming before God asking for what my heart really desired to know. "Do you love me? If you love me, why did you let bad things happen to me?" I think I was afraid of the answer. Then in the middle of grieving the losses of the past, losses of the present began to present themselves.

A friend's husband was diagnosed with an advanced brain tumor. A few years later, he died. Before he died, another friend's husband was diagnosed with a similar brain tumor. And then another. Followed by the death of a friend who had just began to want to talk to God about the senseless death of her sister. I sat next to her at her 50th birthday party. Three weeks later she was gone. Several months after her death, her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I am fifty. I think I am next. Nothing about that statement smacks of feeling safe before God.

I am beginning to understand that when I do not feel safe before God, or anyone in particular, it is easier to demand. Why would I put my raw, tender desires before God when He "kills" people and the things they long for? I would rather demand that He give me what I want, changing His whole game plan, from the Garden of Eden forward. That is what I have done. I have spent the last five years fighting with death (God), vacillating between desire and demand. Mostly roosting on demand.

My experience with "death" went beyond grieving over friends who succumbed to brain tumors, or literal broken hearts, to the loss of an emotionally safe place to live, money I thought God would provide because I was "moving forward in faith", the mental health I thought my life "remake" would insure me, healing from health issues, and on and on.

Currently, I am wondering if standing before God in demand mode was more of the same control I grew up with. I was (and am) still unable to see God as safe, so I demanded (and demand) that He show Himself to be safe, according to my definition of safe.

I will not say that I learned nothing, or experienced nothing, of a life remake/personal growth, but I think that I have primarily been learning about grief. This being the case, it is interesting that upon picking up Sue Monk Kidd's book titled Traveling with Pomegranates I realized that the first section is titled "Loss". This time around, or rather as the journey continues, can I let loss be loss, grieve the loss of my desires, and demand less?