The Dark Before the Dawn | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The Dark Before the Dawn | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jeanette OHagan
03/06/15
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It is the dead of night and I am alone. My head is pounding. My cheek stings. My throat is raw. It is dark and the floor is hard against my knees. My face is resting on something smooth and chilly. With a start, I realize I’m slumped against the porcelain toilet bowl. I must have fainted and hit my cheek as I fell. Upstairs, my family sleeps on oblivious.

Three days and nights I have been vomiting from a migraine. My head is a pandemonium of pain. I can’t bear light or sound or thought. I can’t eat or drink. I vomit until my stomach is empty then dry retch on the emptiness. I can’t bear the brightness of the computer screen, I can’t read or think. I can’t pray. I’m convinced that God is not listening anyway. I want to die and then I wake slumped up against the toilet bowl in the middle of the night.

This is just one more horrible thing on top of a string of others.
I’d endured tragedies and difficult times over the years. When things got bad, I didn't lose hope. I’d cling tighter to my God and His love sustained me.

But in 2010 it was different.

Three years before, in 2008 things had come crashing down. I hadn't broken when my brother killed himself, or my Dad developed Alzheimer’s or when I lost my ministry. I continued to juggle all the demands for time, trying to find the crevices were I could study. I accepted that I would be the one to put my vocation on hold to care for our youngest son. I coped as he continued to wake multiple times each night for years. I continued to care for my toddler and older child as first one shoulder then the other began to seize up. If I moved my arms suddenly, agonizing pain flooded through me. I could not lift my arms above my shoulder. I could barely dress myself or comb my hair. Reluctantly, I agreed to move house – the one I had lived in the longest – and shouldered the process of moving. Then a dear friend, someone I shared my burdens with over coffee, a faithful prayer warrior, lost her long battle with cancer. I was getting constant, debilitating migraines but I managed to keep on coping, holding on to God, hoping that thinks would improve. Yet, every time I prayed for healing, I got another illness to bear.

Then, when it was clear I no longer had the support or time I needed to finish my theological studies, I let go of my dreams. After years of sacrificial hard work, my chosen path was no longer possible. At the same time, my husband’s dreams were coming to fruition. As his prospects brightened mine seem to plummet into darkness.

It was more than I could bear. I had come to the end of my resources and my faith no longer sustained me. I was angry. I was convinced that God had it in for me; that He loved everyone else but he had abandoned me. I could no longer read the Bible. I couldn't pray. I knew the theory, had lived it, but suddenly in no longer seemed real to me. I lost hope.

At a ladies camp, Jesus whispered “I have different dreams for you, my child.” I wanted it to be true, but nothing changed. “I love you,” He said. “Then why are you doing this to me?” I responded. I knew the theology already, still I began to read books on suffering – William P. Young's The Shack, Mark Littleton’s Big Bad God, Philip Yancy’s What Good is God? I wanted to believe but my heart was like an ash heap.

The night of the toilet bowl, I staggered back to my rumpled bed and fell into a restless sleep. My night was infused with a vivid hyper-real dream. I came to a farm full of laughing, joyful people. I was invited to join in the feast. I was submerged in a deep, abiding sense of God’s presence. Laughter bubbled up inside of me and it washed way the doubt and pain. It was like the morning after the rain. It was a glimpse of heaven.

My circumstances did not change, or at least not at once, but the sense of God’s joyful presence changed everything. I had hope in my Lord and Savior once again. It was all I needed.

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