Job LX

 Tomorrow, my youngest is turning seven. It puts a lot into perspective. It’s not that you don’t notice you’re getting older if you don’t have children. There will always be the odd gray hair or the rickety back to let you know you’re getting on in years, but when you have children, it’s a direct and constant reminder of the passing of time. Tempus Fugit, indeed, like it was doing industrial strength speed and washing it down with a six-pack of Red Bull.

The more they grow, the older you get because nothing stops time except for a dirt nap, and in that case, time stops only for the one in the ground. It goes on for everyone else.

It’s odd that while generally speaking, life is a short and fleeting thing, there are moments in life that seem to transpire in slow motion, wherein an hour feels like a day and a day feels like a year. It’s never when we’re laughing, smiling, enjoying the sun on our faces and the breeze in our hair, or in my case, my shaven scalp. Those days seem to zip by, and you look back on that five-day trip four days in and realize that it’s almost over, done with, and you’ll have to get back on that plane, likely with the same people, because most of them bought the same five-day package, and return to packing lunches, school drop off lines, dentist appointments, violin and cello practice, working your first job, then your second job, wondering if you could fit in a third job but just part-time because you want the kids to remember who you are and not call the police when you wander into the house exhausted.

The coo-coo clock doesn’t go any faster or any slower; it keeps perfect time, yet depending on what we’re going through at the time, you wonder where the time went or can’t believe it’s only been three minutes since the last time you looked at your watch. Yes, I know most people don’t have watches anymore, except for those thrall collars that tell them they need to walk three thousand more steps, go to the bathroom, drink more water, and breathe; that last one’s important. Don’t forget to breathe.

How did we manage before we were so laden with gadgets that we emanate low-frequency radiation even when we’re not around them? Don’t get me wrong, I like the convenience of not having to trek to an outhouse in the middle of the night or empty a chamber pot every morning, but what was meant to be a convenience has now become an obsession, an addiction, a prison cell without bars, to the point that if we wind up in an area without bars for more than thirty seconds, we start to sweat, and think it’s the end of the world. You’re three minutes from home, and you’ve driven the same road a thousand times, you’ll be okay. When what was sold as a tool to make your life easier turns into an albatross around your neck, without which you don’t feel normal or at ease, you are no longer mastering the tool; the tool is mastering you.

Job had none of the distractions we’ve become accustomed to. He was alone with his grief, with his pain, with the ever-present reality of his loss, and it’s very likely the days dragged on at a snail’s pace for him. It’s unlikely that time flies by when all you have is a potsherd with which to scratch at yourself and a heap of ashes upon which to lay your head.

Even when his friends showed up, they could do nothing more than sit with him in silence, seeing that his grief was very great. How do you console a man who was on top of the world one day, then the next, all he has left is the pain with which he has to contend?

There’s pain, then there’s pain. Physical pain is one thing; the pain of the heart is something wholly different. If your joints ache on a given morning, you can pop a couple of aspirin or lather yourself in icy hot and make it through the day, but when your heart is broken and shattered, there is no remedy for it but God.

Men try to find other ways to mute or numb the pain of the heart, as they have since the beginning of time, whether giving themselves over to wine, crawling into a bottle, taking pills and powders that are likelier to kill them than make them feel better because that soul-crushing pain of the heart is so unbearable as to make any physical pain pale in comparison.

For many, just having one of the things that happened to Job happen to them would be enough to throw them into an endless spiral of self-destruction, never mind loss upon loss, grief upon grief, and pain upon pain.

Job was within his rights to lament. He was within his rights to grieve and pour out what he’d been holding in for so many days.

Oftentimes, we have unrealistic expectations of those whom God has called to service. We expect them to be superhuman, beyond feeling or emotion, always rising above the circumstances of their existence, and when they do show emotion, when they mourn, and weep, and cry out, we think less of them.  

God never called anyone to be unfeeling, emotionless, or robotic; He called them to be obedient. Rather than look down on a brother who is grieving a loss while continuing to walk in obedience, we should encourage them, be there for them, and comfort them because even in their pain, they’re doing what God called them to do.

My grandfather took my grandmother’s passing hard. She’d been the love of his life, and when she died, a piece of him died with her. While still in mourning, even before we had the wake, a lady from Kansas came to visit because she’d heard about the ministry and she was in the area. We honored her request and gave her our apartment address; even in the midst of all the tumult, my grandfather and I made time for her, and we spent a good thirty minutes talking; we said a prayer, and she left. We thought nothing of it, busy making the arrangements to ship my grandmother back to Romania, which in itself required jumping through so many hoops you’d think you were in the circus. A month or so later, we got a letter in the mail from the aforementioned lady informing us that she was underwhelmed by the experience, didn’t feel welcome when she visited, and that we could have been more hospitable.

If she hadn’t known of the situation and that my grandmother was lying in a casket at a funeral home, I would have seen my way to being more gracious in my response, but she did; it was the first thing I informed her of when she walked into our apartment.

I understand that this may come as a shock to some, but it’s not always about you. The world doesn’t revolve around your happiness, and sometimes, the people you interact with who seem distant or distracted are going through their own version of hell and doing their best to just keep it together.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.