by Kat Silverglate © 2023

Prelude:

After hearing yet another riveting story from her gradually transformed life, I broached the topic gingerly.

Me:     “Have you thought about sharing some of this publicly? It could help someone.”

Her:    “I’d be a horrible subject for a story Kat. I still have more questions than answers. I don’t have some neat little message tied up with a tight pretty bow. Who wants to hear from someone who’s still figuring it out?”

Me:     “Aren’t we always going to be figuring things out?”

Her:    “I’d absolutely share some of it IF I knew it would help even one person. (Insert a Poker Breath here, something explained later in this story). I guess I won’t ever know unless I share, will I? (another Poker Breath). OK, let’s do this.”

The Light that Broke into Our Teen-Angsty Years

Born two weeks shy of my 13^th birthday and five weeks shy of our oldest sister’s 14^th birthday, Shannon I.F. Alderman rocked our world. Not just because she was a surprise – 13 years between kids usually is – but because she infused new life into the middle of our family. We still marvel at the beam of light that cracked through the clouds and shone on her face at the very moment the camera shutter captured the family huddled around her at her baptism. Deeply inquisitive by nature and ever wanting more light to shine on the why behind the what if’s of life, she asked buckets of questions early and often. Why? When? How? How come? Then what? What if? Surely the Lord was smiling when her parents chose to put the initials I.F. in the middle of her given name (the I. for Irene, her paternal grandmother’s name; and the F. for Fitzgerald, her maternal grandmother’s surname).

She was only four when my Irish Twin and I moved away to attend college, five when I met my husband and eight when my sister met hers. By the time she was 18, she’d seen her sisters completely through their 20’s and most of what the world would call our major life milestones. She was the flower girl at both our weddings, attended under-graduate and graduate graduations, visited our first family dwellings, watched our bellies swell in pregnancy and held each of her five nephews and nieces as if they were her very own show and tell. The birth representing the finale of our collective childbearing years happened months before she moved the tassel from right to left on her graduation cap. In short, as we were ending our mile-marking 20’s, she was exuberant about heading into hers… ready for her own marking stones to dot the shore of her private stretch of beach.

Skipping Stones

She was in her mid-20’s when the call came. She’d noticed a hard knot on her neck and just wasn’t feeling that great. Our entire extended family was at Mom’s for Christmas. My older sister and I were in the room with her when the phone rang. We could tell by her side of the conversation that the news was bad. Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Stage 2. The dreaded C.

“Cancer was a defining time for me. While most of my peers were starting careers and establishing relationships, my life came to an abrupt halt. I had a script in my mind about the way things were supposed to be in my 20’s. You find your person. Get married. Buy a house. Find your dream job. Get ready for kids. This wasn’t in the script. I was terrified and disillusioned. The hubris of youth was gone.”

The milestones she’d hoped for seemed more like skipping stones now, bouncing off her and moving on to others in her same life stage.  And while she had a highly curable cancer, was surrounded by loving parents, extraordinary doctors, prayer warriors, friends and family, the journey to cancer-free was brutal. Surgery, ports, chemotherapy, radiation, bone marrow spine biopsy, scans, mouth sores, adverse reactions, getting her hair wacked off before it fell out completely, confronting the effect all of this would have on fertility -- all of it was hard.

“I knew there were people who didn’t have access to the type of treatment I was getting and that my family made huge sacrifices to make sure I got everything I needed. I knew there were people with less curable cancers. People without families who smothered them in care. I knew I was blessed beyond measure, and I was unbelievably grateful. But I also had so many questions and so much anger and fear. I told myself things like, ‘You’re not supposed to complain about feeling stripped of your femininity when you lose your hair. That’s ungrateful.’ ‘You’re not supposed to talk about fear of dying. That’s cruel to your already heartbroken parents.’ So, I did my best to stuff things like that. I thought I was supposed to carpe diem my way through cancer. To seize the day by pretending the questions and doubts weren’t really in there.”

On June 5, 2003, after her last official treatment, she and our mom went to sit by the sea. They were numb and shell shocked from it all, so they sat there speechless on a bench taking in the vastness of the ocean when a little bit of that stuffing pushed its way up and then out of her mouth. “What a nightmare.” As those honest words escaped, Mom’s face lit up and her finger moved toward the horizon. “Look, it’s a double rainbow. You’re going to live Shan.” Neither could explain the peace they felt in that moment or why it seemed like a personal visit from above, but they were stilled by it. Assured. Held.

Questions, Tight Bows, Stuffing and Poker Faces

Shannon would go on to make a life of asking questions. A writer by trade, she felt free to ask endless questions to bring other people’s stories to life. The daughter of a PhD  Nuclear Physicist, she had a front row seat to vetting data that supported a conclusion. “Is there a number bigger than infinity?” her dad queries. This was typical banter between daughter and scientist dad. “Infinity is a concept. Aleph null is the first smallest infinity. It’s the sum of all the numbers.” He was fascinated with proof of the why behind the whats of life; with the line between the provable and the vastness of the universe. 

But the more personal questions... questions about God and how some of the hard things like cancer square with His goodness… questions that required you to be vulnerable and expose some of that stuffing that builds up when you shove it down… those questions hadn’t found a way out yet.

Our mother, a devout woman of faith, believed God was good. Period. Full stop. She wasn’t naive or uneducated – she was smart as a whip -- but she felt uncomfortable exposing her stuffing or confessing doubt. Whether it was a generational thing or a cultural Irish thing, it was a thing. And it set an invisible boundary beyond which her girls would have to go without a parental guide. A spiritual nomad land if you will.

So, when those things did come up for Shannon, she tended to wrap them in tightly tied bows and formulaic expressions.

“For much of the time post-cancer, I thought formulaically about God. If I do things ‘God’s way’ everything will turn out the way it’s supposed to. If I do x, y and z, God will give me the desires of my heart.”

She joined a small group at church and had deeper intimacy with people who were expressing honest questions and doubts without fear of rejection or God’s displeasure.   

I formed some of the deepest relationships of my life in that group. And I did share some with them, but those things inside that I’d stuffed for years, I thought they would go away if I tried harder or did it God’s way or pushed them down deeper. The hidden parts of me were covered by a carpe diem exterior. Confidence was my cover. My poker face.

The Incompatibility of Stuffing and Stillness

By the time COVID hit, Shannon had lost several dear friends, watched her father draw his last breath, served as the boots on the ground caretaker for our mother while she declined physically, provided support for me and my sister while we planned and held four weddings in one calendar year for our collective kids (more skipping stones), and then said farewell to our beloved mother.

Somewhere between cancer and COVID, her stuffing decided to expand like yeasty dough. When she’d pause or slow down, even for a little while, she couldn’t get away from the discomfort, so she found ways to feel better for short spurts of time -- food, drink, social media, movies, overworking -- the usual suspects. The more she went to these comfort items for relief, the more of them she needed to push past the pain. Now on COVID lockdown, she was finally alone with her stuffing with no choice but to be still. The pain was overwhelming and numbing had long since stopped working for her. So, she decided to look for people who could walk beside her as she figured out how to healthily unstuff.

I wanted a Christian counselor because I had so many questions about where God was in all of this. And I wanted a friend who had been through the whole numbing thing and was thriving without the desire for false comfort.

After what she calls the “Godly Google Search” she found a great Christian counselor. She went in feeling like there was something wrong with her because she had so many questions, and she came out with this:

“What if God made you to be inquisitive? What if there’s nothing wrong with questions Shannon? What if you boldly leaned into them? And then got still as answers came?”

A Wonderful Counselor

Shannon’s response sounded like the air coming out of an over-inflated tire. She would come to call this her poker breath. It was the visceral thing that started coming out of her when she couldn’t keep an uncomfortable thought inside anymore. When she stopped stuffing.

She’d heard “be still and know that I am God” a gazillion times, but the right thing at the wrong time doesn’t seem to move the needle. She hated being still. She hated not knowing what to do with the stuff that came up when she was. But this counselor was going to be her guide through the nomad land of iffyness followed by stillness.  

When she finally met the “how I got through the numbing thing” friend she’d prayed for, God’s hand in the pairing quickly became apparent starting with her address on Angel Road. In response to questions about talking honestly to God, she roared like a lioness:

“You pick up your cell phone and you walk down to the beach and you hold the phone to your ear like you are having the most honest unguarded conversation and you talk out loud to God like He’s on the other end of that phone. If someone sees you, they’ll think you’re talking to a friend. Which you are. And then you expect answers to come. You look for them everywhere. You live expectantly.”

Out it started to come. The mountain of old and new if’s.

"What if I’m single forever? What if I can’t have kids? What IF I follow my calling and I never reach the mountain top? What is my legacy? What am I leaving behind? What IF I’m too old by the world’s standards to start down a career path I love? What IF my unanswered prayers fill me with fear that God doesn’t hear me? Or worse, doesn’t care? What IF God is tired of all my questions? Done with me because I ask “what if” too much?  What IF I’m still and don’t hear anything?"

What if, what if, what if? 

As this story was being written (now three years into her iffy stillness journey and countless poker breaths later), Shannon calls to tell me that God has just put a period on this piece. She was driving down the road and saw the back of a truck with the words “What IF?” It made her still. She hears those like this: “What I.F.?” “What Shannon?” “What do you want?” “I’m right here.”

She knows in her stillness it’s God.

Still with the IF in LifE:  

Isn’t it marvelous that the middle two letters in life are IF. Even as we walk with God, we find ourselves still with IF in life. Still faced with IF’s and questions. God says ask.

So fond are we of saying that life is a gift (also a word with IF at the middle), we can become uncomfortable with questions as part of the gift of faith. Just as we don’t keep a bow tightly tied and still open a gift, we don’t walk in faith without honest doubts and questions. The gift of the presence of the Lord comes with permission to ask genuine questions.

In his sermon Praying Our Doubts, Tim Keller talks about how Jesus met Thomas’ doubt about Christ’s resurrection with presence. Jesus walked right up to him one week after Thomas expressed radical doubt. He told Thomas to touch his nail scarred hands and side. His doubt was met by presence. Thomas responds with the clearest declaration of faith of any of the other disciples: My Lord and my God! The encounter ends with Christ telling Thomas: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Blessed! Met daily in our doubts with the Lord present in our hearts.   

Our June Mobile Mission

Our mission this month is simple. You have a tightly tied bow, three stickers that say “open me already” and an untied ribbon… With the first tightly tied bow and sticker, see if you can make a list of your own honest questions. The things that are unopened toward Him. Open them to the Lord. Pray your doubts and questions to Him. You might consider listening to the Keller sermon Praying Our Doubts as a guide.

With the second sticker, ask the Lord to help you open yourself to stillness. To be still so that you can KNOW it is God who ultimately meets your needs. Open yourself to His presence. Ask Him to help you live expectantly. To expect answers from Him. To recognize what He sends: Scripture, people, circumstances, pastors, peace, conviction, even trucks with “what if” on the back!

With the third sticker and the untied ribbon (the undone bow), ask yourself if you live life as if Grace is a gift you receive, not something you earn by presenting a tied-up life to the world? His Grace is sufficient! Ask Him to open you more to His sufficiency. To open your heart to His Grace.

Amen? Amen!