Skip to main content

Eshet Chayil


It's been a hard week. In each still moment, my mind went back to Rachel Held Evans. I experienced the wishful thinking and grief again and again, as I would thinking, "Surely it's not true." How can she not laugh again? Hold her children again? Console her spouse, Dan?

Julia, you may tell me, she will do these things again in heaven. As true as that may be, it is not enough to stop the tide of unremitting sorrow that is swamping them and so many others now. Heaven is not meant to be a salve to stop earthly pain. It is the answer to the pain caused by the forces that oppose God, but it does not mean that pain is not real when it is experienced in this life.

I've literally thought about her body growing cold, her ashes or her dust, her 3-year-old wondering again where Mommy is, her husband replaying last words over and over. I think about the small anniversaries passing by at a horrible clip- last week she, a month ago she, two months ago she...

A friend pointed out that this is terrifying in many ways. It is, I agreed, because this is the kind of fluke risk we have not accepted. We have considered (or not considered) the risks of car travel, heart disease, breast cancer. We know that there are wars and even shootings in public places. We've weighed the effort to keep ourselves in good health and to balance our rest and our work.

We don't weigh the risk of a fluke medical situation when we go to the hospital to have something treated.

Even when we know the US has very poor maternal care, especially for black and brown women, we still assume most things will be fine.

An unusual reaction to medication, causing our brain to seize, is not in our catalog of worries.

Or it wasn't.

The way we make it as parents to simultaneously try to control everything and to accept that we control almost nothing. Rachel's death showed us that we aren't in control of things we hadn't even fever dreamed.

What can we do?

We can remind each other of the low chances of this kind of death and that it likely wasn't preventable.

We can work to prevent the deaths that can be eclipsed, especially with regard to maternity and maternal health.

We can promote the truth about vaccines and preventative medicine.

And we can assure one another that if the worst happens, we will always speak of them, we will mother their children, and we will not let their good legacy die.

I think that's what I need to hear today and what I will be telling the other women of valor whom I know.

And it's what I will say to Rachel when I see her. Or what I am telling her now, which she may already know.


Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latibule

I like words and I recently discovered Save the Words , a website which allows you to adopt words that have faded from the English lexicon and are endanger of being dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary. When you adopt a word, you agree to use it in conversation and writing in an attempt to re-introduce said word back into regular usage. It is exactly as geeky as it sounds. And I love it. A latibule is a hiding place. Use it in a sentence, please. After my son goes to bed, I pull out the good chocolate from my latibule and have a "mommy moment". The perfect latibule was just behind the northwest corner of the barn, where one had a clear view during "Kick the Can". She tucked the movie stub into an old chocolate box, her latibule for sentimental souvenirs. I like the sound of latibule, though I think I would spend more time defining it and defending myself than actually using it. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure how often I use the ...
2 comments
Read more

What is Best (Sermon)

Pentecost 15 (Year A)  Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27;  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 I recently read a novel set in a post-pandemic, apocalyptic world. In the book, people were working to re-establish pockets of society. A traveling symphony moved from town to town in caravans- performing music and works of Shakespeare. Early in their travels, they had tried other plays, but people only wanted to see Shakespearean works. One of the symphony members commented on the desire for Shakespeare, "People want what was best about the world." As I read and since I finished the book, I kept thinking about that phrase.  People want what was best about the world. People want what was best about the world. That is true even when we’re not in a cataclysmic re-working of what we’ve always known. The very idea of nostalgia, of longing for what once was, is about wanting what was best about the world or what seemed like the best to us. One of the massive tension...
Post a Comment
Read more

Would I Do?

Palm Sunday Mark 11:1-11 One of my core memories is of a parishioner who said, "I don't think I would have been as brave as the three in the fiery furnace. I think I would have just bowed to the king. I would have bowed and known in my heart that I still loved God. I admire them, but I can tell the truth that I wouldn't have done it." (Daniel 3) To me, this man's honesty was just as brave. In front of his fellow Christians, in front of his pastor, he owned up to his own facts: he did not believe he would have had the courage to resist the pressures of the king. He would have rather continued to live, being faithful in secret, than risk dying painfully and prematurely for open obedience to God.  I can respect that kind of truth-telling. None of us want to be weighed in the balance and found wanting. For some of us, that's our greatest fear. The truth is, however, that I suspect most of us are not as brave as we think we are. The right side of history seems cle...
Post a Comment
Read more