Dear Time
Dear Time,
They say that you are a healer.
I think you’re just a stealer.
First you took my self-esteem. Unkind comments in the playground - sticks and stones may break your bones but words will haunt you forever. When I retreated away from others and placed my confidence in academic performance, you just marched on. Each year the work got harder until I couldn’t excel any more. So I set my heart on motherhood.
You took that too. One much loved, much wanted baby, and then the next. Lost before anyone else ever knew they were. “Some people just have a glass of red wine” said the GP “and others get all like, it was a baby.” It was clear which approach he felt was most merited. The nurse seemed to think similar as she sent me for a scan “to make sure there’s no bits left behind.” So I hushed it all up, telling next to nobody. Clearly a big fuss wasn’t warranted. So why did I feel as though the bottom had fallen out of my world? Why was I angry at the sun for daring to shine?
Next went my faith. I’d become a Christian just a few years before. Now the words “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” rang hollow in the face of loss. I wanted. I wanted my babies back. I wanted to hold them. Now I was left in secret agony, unable to function and fully aware the outside world did not think it an adequate excuse to fall apart. Where was God in that? It seemed that any comfort he promised was purely theoretical. If you had faith, you had to pretend it was ok. That was even more barbaric than believing you were on your own.
After that I said goodbye to my mental health. The black clouds marched in and I sat around like a zombie. “You’ve taken this really hard, haven’t you?” said another GP. More confirmation that this was not an appropriate reaction. But what do you do to pull yourself together when you can’t pull yourself together?
Next you took my body. I got older and greyer. And rounder. Now I was not only unacceptable on the inside – at least that was capable of being hidden – but the outside as well. I’d like to think we’re not so shallow as to rate people’s physical appearance but every yo-yo diet reveals what people really think: “You’ve lost so much weight!” or “You look muchbetter”.
Time, you’ve taken so much.
But through tears, I want to say thank you.
I’d have loved to be self-assured, to parent those little ones, to be sorted in what I believed, to be well in my head, to be thin like the world seems to value so much.
But when you took these things I got something better.
I got Jesus.
The God-man who came from outside of time, having seenloss and pain from a distance and hating it. He came and embraced the curse that each one of us faces. That of brokenness, loss, grief, suffering, regret and eventually the ultimate curse you are marching each of us to, Time. The curse of death.
Jesus came and subjected himself to you, Time, knowing that the only way to bring any comfort to us was to feel it acutely for himself.
The God-man wept at our loss. He sacrificed everything to offer us real, meaningful comfort in our loss in this life, and a new life where your ravages can’t touch us after our death.
A man who I had no need for before because I was so busy trying to do it all for myself…
But after you broke me, I knew I couldn’t do anything without.
You’re no healer, Time, but Jesus is.
Thank you for shattering the faith I had before – it was in some fake god who doesn’t exist. Now I know the real God, the God-man, Jesus. And my Jesus would never want me to pretend it was all ok when it wasn’t.
So, thank you Time.
If it hadn’t been for what you stole, I’d have lost out on someone so much more precious than what you took.