Job

"Job spoke, saying, 'Is not man's life on earth a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages. So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. If in bed I say, 'When shall I rise?', then the night drags on; I am filled with restlessness until the dawn. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.' " - [Job 7: 1-4, 6-7].



The Book of Job begins, "There was a man, . . . whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. "  He had a family of seven sons and three daughters; and thousands of sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, and many servants -- a sure sign of prosperity.

And yet, in one day, groups of marauding attackers kill Job's servants, burn up his sheep, and carry off his camels. Later that same day, a great wind knocks the house down, and all of Job's sons and daughters are killed.

Another day, horrible sores plague Job and his health deteriorates, as he suffers in pain. Then, his friends show up to "console him" but for an entire week, they do  to peak to him. Then, they blame Job for his troubles. They say, 'You must be a sinner and so, God is punishing you.' Or, 'Your children must have sinned.' -[Job 8:3-5].

Poor Job has lost everything. Even his wife says to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die," -[Job 2: 9].

Oftentimes, I myself describe my life as "Job-like".

When I was coming into this world, I almost died before I was even born. My mother almost died, too.

When I was three, there was a fire in my grandparents' house.  I was traumatized in the aftermath, to see the skeleton of my grandmother's charred easy- chair, and the scorched walls.

When I was four, I almost drowned in a neighbor's pool.

When I was six, I was diagnosed with a chronic lung disease. And, my mother chain-smoked my entire life. By the time I had reached young adulthood, it was as if I had been a chain- smoker my whole childhood.

In my abusive and cruel home, I got black eyes. I was called ugly every day. When I was eight, I shut down my emotions, hoping that would make me invisible enough for the abuse to stop.

But it didn't. When I was ten, I stopped speaking.

When I was fourteen, a member of my extended family committed suicide. That was also the year that my parents took church away. In my teen ignorance, I believed that God was in church and that my parents had the power to take God away. Oh where, oh where was God?

When I was eighteen, I stashed a packet, containing a toothbrush and a wash cloth, at a friend's house, in case I had to suddenly escape from what was going on in my own home.

In my early twenties, when I was thousands of miles away from home in graduate school, I was the victim of a major crime. I almost died that day, according to the police report. I was so shaken, I wanted to quit school for a semester, so I could recover. But my family told me that if I did that, I would be a failure.

I did-- triumphantly -- finish graduate school. But the night before graduation, my parents called me a failure anyway.

A few years after graduation, I met the wonderful man who would become my husband. But my parents' reaction was, 'Can't you marry someone else?' They refused to stand in the receiving line at my wedding -- all because I was marrying a Catholic.

Several years ago, I converted to Catholicism. This was a gut-wrenching process. I had to work my way through a lifetime of anti-Catholic blasphemy, repeated ad infinitem by my family. I had to willfully trust that, through all that fog of blasphemy, God was still there.

After my conversion, I lost a few long-time friends, who could not understand the "new me". Worse yet, a couple of weeks after my conversion, one of my best friends died. She and I had dreamed of growing old together.

Through all these years, I have to confess that I kept score of my wounds. I also plunged into the black hole of despair.

I took to proclaiming, like Job, "I would rather be strangled than to suffer like this. I hate my life." -[Job 5: 15-16]. There were times, like Job that I wished to sleep deeply, because it was only in sleep that I no longer felt the pain-- until the nightmares came.

A Wise Advisor started to tell me that I would never be happy. I began to fear that she was right.

Well-meaning friends would say to me, "Yours is the worst story I have ever heard." After their unintentional encouragement of my despair, I actually became irritated if someone else had a tragic life. Somehow, I felt that I owned that franchise!

And yet, after awhile I realized that, after so much suffering in my early life, wouldn't -- couldn't-- my life come to mean something?

Then, some other friends would say, "HOW did you possibly get through all that-- and as a child, mostly alone?" At first, I would blurt out, 'It must be God'. Gradually, that spontaneous response became, not just a concept, but a strong belief.

 Yes, for a time like Job, I did complain about my life, saying things like, "Don't I have the right to complain?", and "I hate my life".

But I never gave up on God. I never hated God. Or blamed Him for my troubles. Or declared that there IS no God.

In fact, my life is in many ways, proof that there IS a God! In so many ways, and for so may reasons,  I should be depressed, joyless, self-hating, self-abusing, defeatist, or, perhaps even deceased. But the dark days of my early life have given me new Hope for the future.

Pope Francis has said that, to be an authentic follower of Christ, we must not complain or "look like we just came from a funeral." We must exhibit that "authentic missionary spirituality, full of fervor, joy, generosity, courage and boundless love." -[Evangelii Gaudiium ch. 5- - 261].

In fact, he has said, "we don't have a mission; each of us IS a mission. It's for that mission, that each of us is alive." - [Fr. Roger Landry, Catholic Education Resource Center. ]

[Related Posting, "Hating This Life", March 25, 2012"].


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