Fatigue creeps into her face. The school year has kicked into high gear with little or no ramp-up time. Advanced Placement classes wait for no student. Play practice goes until 6 p.m. (at least!) daily. My introverted child knows how to navigate hours in a loud, large public high school, but it takes herculean effort some days. The drive home provides space to vent or put in her headphones and retreat. Today she sits quietly, cell phone not in sight, listening to the radio. Our requisite conversation of “How was your day?” “OK” long completed.
Top of the hour and the news comes on. More disasters, natural and unnatural, detailed, dissected, told without a hint of emotion. Then a story on the death penalty. Which drugs used. Which states practice it. Where the last execution occurred. Gruesome, told with earnestness, but clinically, objectively. “I don’t believe anyone should be executed.” The exhausted teenager speaks. “No matter what they have done,” she adds. She goes on to talk about the nuance of victims’ families wanting to see their loved one’s killer dead. She can understand that. She thinks she might feel that way if someone, for example, killed her sister. “I hope not, but I might.”
I agree with her, noting that there are also families who advocate to spare the person convicted of murdering their child, spouse or parent. We comment on the magnitude of that kind of mercy. We talk about whether life imprisonment is just, the possibility of transformation (or not), the unfairness of judging minors as adults. It all seems like a rational, thoughtful discussion. Until her face contorts and she begins to cry. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m tired.” I nod. I know. “It’s just,” she pauses, “it’s just that I wish I could see the good in people, but sometimes I can’t.” “There’s lots of evidence to the contrary,” I respond. “But you have faith. You believe that people can change and are mostly good — and sometimes I just don’t.”
She wipes her tears with her hands, takes a breath and starts to cry again, “I really want to, but sometimes I just can’t.” I know this is about more than the story on the radio. It is about her friend hospitalized for depression after a suicide attempt. It is about her transgender classmate, eager to take hormones, but denied them due to some combination of cost and family uncertainty about what’s right. It is about two active shooter drills in two months of school. It is about knowing as much as we cherish and accept her, there are those in this world and in the church who made promises to her in her baptism, who won’t or don’t because of who she loves.
I want so badly to say that people are good, and that evil is an aberration and that all will be well. I want to assure her that her bright, funny, talented friend now in a locked unit an hour away will surely be OK and back in school soon. I want to say with confidence that her personable, smart, well-adjusted friend so desperate to have his body match his mind and heart will get the care he needs: physical, emotional, spiritual. I want to believe that active shooter drills are purely precautionary. I, too, want to see the good, but like her, sometimes I just can’t.
I don’t confess to her that my faith wanes. On days when I hear of children separated from parents, refugees refused asylum, neighbors murdering their neighbors of a different religion, policies enacted to limit benefits to the poor, I wonder: Where is the good? But right now, I think, she needs me to believe what she can’t.
I stumble over some lame exposition of a Reformed theology of sin, noting that her observations and feelings are valid, true, understandable. The good is often obscured beyond recognition. Our driveway comes into view. She gets herself together. The liminal space of vulnerability between school and home will soon end. But before it does I say, “Sometimes just wanting to see good, is good enough.” Fervently praying her hope won’t be denied.
Lord, as we wrestle with a longing for good and the grief of failing to see it, often as much in ourselves as in our world, we ask for your mercy. Grant us vision to see your created goodness even when it is obscured, marred or concealed. Give us courage to call out evil and also grace to call forth beauty and truth. When we feel overwhelmed by the worries and woes of this life, pursue us with your love, remind us of your promises, send us your Spirit, reveal to us your Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ, the light that no darkness can overcome. Amen.
