Christian M. M. Brady - Beautiful and Terrible Things: A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope

Beautiful and Terrible Things

Beautiful and
Terrible Things

A Christian Struggle
with Suffering, Grief, and Hope

C HRISTIAN M. M. B RADY

2020 Christian M. M. Brady

First edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Nita Ybarra

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brady, Christian M. M., author.

Title: Beautiful and terrible things : a Christian struggle with suffering, grief, and hope / Christian M.M. Brady.

Description: First edition. | Louisville, Kentucky : Westminster John Knox Press, 2020. | Summary: When his eight-year-old son died suddenly from a fast-moving blood infection, Brady heard the typical platitudes about accepting Gods will and knew that quiet acceptance was not the only godly way to grieve. With deep faith, knowledge of Scripture, and the wisdom that comes only from experience, Brady guides readers grieving losses and setbacks of all kinds in voicing their lament to God, reflecting on the nature of human existence, and persevering in hopeProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022299 (print) | LCCN 2020022300 (ebook) | ISBN 9780664266127 (paperback) | ISBN 9781611649987 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: SufferingReligious aspectsChristianity. | GriefReligious aspectsChristianity. | HopeReligious aspectsChristianity.

Classification: LCC BV4909 .B729 2020 (print) | LCC BV4909 (ebook) | DDC 248.8/66dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022299

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022300

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Dedicated to

John William McKenzie Mack Brady

16 January 2004 31 December 2012

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord,
and let light perpetual shine upon him.
May his soul, and the souls of all the departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

CONTENTS

I had forgotten that it was New Years Eve. I called the president of our university, the man who had hired me and become my mentor, to tell him that our son Mack was being taken by helicopter to Hershey Medical Center. I asked if I could have the number of the dean of the School of Medicine to ask him for any assistance. When the dean answered the phone, I could hear the party in the background.

Elizabeth and I drove the two and half hours south from State College to Hershey, not knowing that Mack had already died on the helicopter, almost before we had left town. We found out the next morning that it was sepsis, a fast-moving blood infection that has a 50 percent mortality rate if properly diagnosed within an hour or two of onset, over 90 percent if not caught immediately. It presents itself like the fluin Macks case, the same flulike symptoms that his buddy had two days before. Within thirty-six hours of waking up with a fever, our little boy, my buddy, was gone.

When we arrived at the hospital, we were escorted to the ironically named quiet room and told the chaplain would be with us soon. I knew what that meant, and I told my wife. I wont pretend to remember the details and order of events; it remains an emotional, swirling vortex of trauma in my mind and body even seven years later. Self-consciously, I admit that when we heard that Mack had died, the very first thing that came to my mind was to scream out,

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from helping me, from the words

of my groaning?

I swallowed the words. I kept them inside me because it seemed melodramatic, too sanctimonious, to utter them aloud. But they came unbiddenand can you really be melodramatic standing by the body of your child? Silently, in my mind, the words continued to run again and again through my head as we stood next to his lifeless form.

How could God turn his back to us? How could it be that Mack was gone, our prayers ignored? We had prayed with Mack as they put him on the gurney to take him on his first and last ride in a helicopter. As it took off, we looked up from the parking lot, and I wept as I prayed, Lord! Protect my child! In that room, I wanted to wail, and I wept. At times I continue to wail, and I suppose these words are an extension or a continuation of that wailing. Even now, years later, every day we cry some, and some days we cry a lot.

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

and by night, but find no rest.

These opening verses of Psalm 22 are a lament of one surrounded, literally or metaphorically, by enemies, but the emotion they contain, the despair, is felt by any who grieve. Yet every time I find myself invoking this psalm, part of my mind immediately chastises me, saying, Who are you to invoke the words of Christ? I am a person in pain, grieving, that is who. These were Jesus words, but first they were the words of the psalmist. Jesus appropriated them, and so can we.

A few years after his son Eric died, Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff published a collection of essays and reflections called Lament for a Son. I have often noted the lack of an article. He does not offer a lament or the lament for a son. He implores us to lament for a sonhis son. This is my lament for my son.

Lament is, at its heart, personal. Even when we lament as a community, we each bring our own voice to the chorus. This work is also then, out of necessity, a reflection on my own life. I grew up in the church being taught from the earliest age the Scriptures that would eventually form the foundation of my faith as well as the basis of my academic discipline. And in that horrible moment when we stood over Macks beautiful, lifeless body, it was Scripture that came to mind: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

In the hospital, in the hours after our son had died, I restrained myself and refrained from crying out. Yet in my head the noise was deafening. How! How could you let this happen? How could he be gone? Gone. Here but not. Present but forever absent. Gone. But we held each other, my wife and I, and we cried over Macks little body. We remained quiet, in shock, stoic.