The God of All Comfort: Finding Your Way into His Arms

CHAPTER 1

THE CORDS OF DEATH ENTANGLED ME

The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me….

In my distress I called to the LORD;

I cried to my God for help.

PSALM 18:4, 6

Friday, August 1

Fourteen months before Steve’s death

Oh help us, Jesus. The sky has fallen. Steve called. It’s not an ulcer. He has colon cancer. Please, please, please help us. I can’t even imagine life without my gentle husband. No! O sweet Jesus, help us.

Sally and Annie [two of our daughters] have just arrived at my speaking engagement in Indiana. Right away, they want to know the results of Steve’s test. There’s no putting them off, as I thought I might, until after I speak.

We’re all crazy with fear. We’re leaving now for the auditorium where I must speak. Be with us, O God.

Saturday, August 2

We’re in the car now—Sally’s driving—trying to get back to Steve and Beth [another daughter] in Nebraska as fast as we can. Keep us safe, O God—it’s dark and rainy and our tears have exhausted us.

Somehow I got through the speaking. I’m sure it was dreadful—I felt like I was under water, the words coming out of my mouth like slow bubbles.

Afterward, Debbie [the Indiana retreat coordinator] told the women about Steve’s diagnosis. An audible gasp. A thousand women stunned. Many wept. That scared me. He’s not dying—is he, God? No—he can’t be. He’s in his prime.

And yet I know, we are but a vapor. Anyone. Anytime.

O God, help.

Debbie called the girls up so the women could pray for us. Sally broke down, bargaining with the women: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE pray for my daddy. I need him so badly right now in my life. If you will pray fervently for my daddy, I will pray for you, whatever request you want, every day for a month. Please, please, help us—this is a terrible cancer.

I knew I needed to get the girls off the stage. I whispered to them and they turned toward the steps, moving slowly, like shattered glass. I nodded to Kim Hill, and she moved up quickly, eager to rescue us, ready to lead the women in worship.

But oh—and I know You know—our hearts were so leaden it felt impossible to enter into worship. Annie was silent. Sally and I were weeping even while singing It is Well with My Soul. I had a fleeting thought of trying to be a better witness, but then had a truer thought that You hate pretense and deceit of any kind.

So, the truth is, Mighty God, I bow to Your sovereign will, for I know You are Wisdom itself—but I am also afraid of what Your will might be. This is surely our Gethsemane.

As I tell you of our Gethsemane, I know you have—or will have—yours. I often think of how Jesus told Peter that a day was coming when Peter would be taken down a road he did not want to go.¹ We will all go down roads we never wanted to walk—the death of a child, the infidelity of a spouse, the shattering of a dream that filled our hearts with hope. But though each of our roads will be different, Jesus made it clear that suffering is a part of living.²

When I learned that Steve had cancer, I felt like I was drowning, a metaphor the psalmist often uses for the feelings that overwhelm us when real trouble comes. Yet looking back, I realize that God was on His way. I am riveted by the poetic imagery in Psalm 18. Just like the psalmist, I felt the cords of death entangling me. But God heard and the earth trembled and mountains shook as He parted the heavens to come down, mounting the cherubim and flying on the wings of the wind to His child:

He reached down from on high and took hold

of me;

he drew me out of deep waters.

PSALM 18:16

As I tell you my story, I will show you how God drew me out of the deep waters, for I know He can do the same for you. The way He came to me and showed Himself to me is the way He has come and shown Himself to suffering saints throughout the ages: from Basil to Bonhoeffer to Bono,³ and yes, to Brestin, a simple daughter of God.

God spoke to me through the book of Psalms. That may not seem like a new idea, but what was new to me was how God intended me to use the psalms. I discovered that if you use the psalms incorrectly, you’ll sink. Use them as God intended, and the Psalter sail will take you through the stormiest sea.

Philip Yancey said that he had been told to go to the psalms for comfort, but when he did, he would end up reading one of the wintriest psalms and end up feeling frostily depressed.⁴ How comforting, for example, is this?

Your wrath has swept over me;

your terrors have destroyed me.

All day long they surround me like a flood;

they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken my companions and loved ones

from me;

the darkness is my closest friend.

PSALM 88:16–18

But then Yancey came to understand that the Psalter is not a book about God, but a journal written to God. We do not read it like the other books of the Bible. Instead, we use it to help us dialogue with God. In the opening of this chapter you read my prayer journal over my shoulder. In the same way, when you read the psalms, you are reading someone’s prayer journal over his shoulder.

If our prayers are honest, at times we will cry, God, what are You thinking? Where are You? The psalmist did this repeatedly, lamenting: Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?⁵ The Psalter is rife with the pathos of praise and ethos of agony.⁶ As author William Brown says, The book of psalms captures better than any other corpus of Scripture the ‘bipolar’ life of faith.⁷ Life is hard, God is mysterious, and right now we see through a glass darkly. The Psalms, perhaps more than any other book of the Bible, help us see all these truths lived out.

BRINGING WHAT IS IN US

The first vital truth God imparted to me through the psalms is that He wanted me to be honest with Him. My prayer journal often sounds like the journal of a mad woman, and so does this holy prayer journal!

God is not angry with us when we are honest, as long as we treat Him with the respect a holy God deserves. If there was one thing that consistently made Jesus angry, it was the pretense and hypocrisy the Pharisees displayed. The psalms remind us to avoid the trap of dishonesty with God as we bring to Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.⁸ God wants honesty from us because He wants intimacy with us. And true intimacy is not possible with anyone when dishonesty interferes. When we face Him and tell Him what we are really thinking and feeling, as the psalmists did, we open ourselves up to a dialogue with Him. And why not tell Him? He knows anyway.

After Steve’s diagnosis, when I voiced my fear to the Lord in my journal, I asked: He’s not dying—is he, God? No—he can’t be. He’s in his prime. Asking that question opened my soul to an answer, and it came, echoing the words of Scripture: And yet I know, we are but a vapor. Anyone. Anytime.

Though this wasn’t the answer I wanted, it was the truth, and the truth, not lies, is a rope that will not break. You will see this dialogue happening frequently in my journal entries. Sometimes my dialogue was with God and sometimes with my own soul as I opened up to God calming me. (The soul is often considered feminine, probably to connote her vulnerability. In Scripture she is compared not only to a fretful baby, but to a female deer. She needs calming, for she is sensitive and easily startled.) It was these cries in particular that led me to the truth, and the truth brought me into the arms of the God of All Comfort.

WHETHER THE HEART IS FULL OR EMPTY

The psalms not only free us to be honest, they help us find the words to pray. Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains this clearly in some of his last recorded words, written while he awaited hanging for being part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler:

It is a dangerous error, certainly very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself…. Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty….

If we wish to pray with confidence and gladness, then the words of Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer. For here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words which come from God become, then, the steps on which we find our way to God.

Now there is in the Holy Scriptures a book which is distinguished from all books of the Bible by the fact that it contains only prayers. The book is the Psalms.⁹

Bonhoeffer is not telling us that we shouldn’t pour out our hearts to God—Psalm 62 tells us to do just that! But he is making the point that when we use the psalms to help us pray, we catch the wind of the Spirit. The psalms, when prayed with understanding, have the power to take us through the waves and into God’s safe harbor.

WHEN SORROWS LIKE SEA BILLOWS ROLL

Yet I know that when you are in the midst of a storm, it is hard to focus on Scripture. Grief comes in like waves, anxieties multiply, and tears make it hard to even see the page. I believe that’s why God gave us the psalms as music—prayer songs we can sing when other words are not possible.

During Steve’s illness, a couple of very wise friends gave me CDs of calming music instead of books about suffering. At first I couldn’t read, but I could listen to music.

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,¹⁰ and music that is Scripture has the greatest power of all. When King Saul was tormented by an evil spirit, he called for David to come and play the psalms for him. When David took up his harp and played, then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.¹¹ The psalms—which are filled with musical notations—were sung verbatim regularly in the early church. Today the psalms are often the inspiration for the great music of the church, from simple praise choruses to magnificent hymns. God repeatedly exhorts us to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs and what a gift this mandate is.

That’s why an accompanying music CD is available for this book. (It also comes with the companion Bible study guide.*) Harpist Amy Shreve, who has a lovely Celtic folk style, sings and plays the hymns that I mention in this book as being so important to me in my own grief. I encourage you to listen and learn these powerful psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs—even on days when it is too difficult to read. Your soul will be soothed and evil spirits will flee.

The first hymn on this CD is It Is Well with My Soul. Though this hymn stuck in my throat the night of Steve’s diagnosis, still, it was the truth I needed to hear. Horatio Spafford, who suffered greater loss than most of us will ever know, wrote the lyrics after looking into the sea billows where his four daughters had drowned. Since I could barely sing the words, I have often marveled how Spafford, at a time of unfathomable grief, could write them. The prayers of the Bible must have been etched in Spafford’s heart, a heart confident of God’s love and sovereignty. Though nothing can fully prepare us for grief, those who have been strengthened in their love relationship with God before the storm arrives are more likely to make it through the icy waters.

Spafford has often been compared to the prophet Job, losing first his wealth in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and then his four daughters at sea. His wife, who was rescued from the shipwreck, sent her husband a telegram saying: Saved alone. What shall I do? As Spafford crossed the Atlantic to her, he asked the captain to show him the spot where his daughters drowned. After looking into the dark icy waters, he went back to his stateroom and wrote:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.¹²

Spafford’s lyrics parallel so many of the laments of the psalms, and certainly the words of Job himself:

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;

may the name of the LORD be praised.¹³

That terrible night when we discovered Steve had cancer, the truth of God’s sovereignty is, indeed, what sustained us. God was on His way, running to rescue us from the waters of grief, and He did it through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. As you read my journal entries, you will see, in increasing intensity as God was maturing me, the following three elements laced in my prayers: the honesty of the psalms, the very words of the psalms, and the music of the psalms.

Before you read more of my journal entries, let me give you a little background to our story. At the time of Steve’s diagnosis, he was an orthopedic surgeon and a leader in the medical community of central Nebraska. We had three daughters at home and two grown sons. Steve had not been feeling his best that summer, but said, I just need a vacation. So we had carved out two weeks at the end of the summer, after my retreat in Indiana. Sally, Annie, and I had planned to drive to our cabin in Wisconsin and meet Steve and our other daughter, Beth, at the cabin. On Thursday, Steve felt shaky while performing a six-hour back surgery. He planned to get checked for an ulcer Friday before leaving for vacation. That checkup cancelled our vacation plans as we began fighting for Steve’s life.

Sunday, August 3

It’s morning, and the girls are soundly sleeping. Pale. Exhausted. I hate to wake them because we all cried so much last night. I’ll let them sleep a little longer. Please restore their strength.

Last night we drove and drove, not wanting to stop, just wanting to get to Steve, to touch him, to cling to him. But he called and pleaded with us to stop. Please, Dee Dee, stop. I need you all to be safe. Stop—for me.

So we started looking for a motel—but because it’s state fair time in Iowa, every motel blinked: NO VACANCY. No room. No room. We were getting a little crazy, wondering why You weren’t helping us find a room. Sally was crying to You: Please, Jesus, please, Jesus. Oh.

Then, at this last exit in Des Moines, we saw a blinking vacancy light. We rang the tinny bell at the empty desk in the lobby and a man in the rear scooted back in his chair and squinted at the three of us. Roughly, he said: Only got one smoking room—one bed. He scooted back, out of sight, dismissing us. Why we left, I don’t know.

But there was nothing in the next town.

NO VACANCY. NO VACANCY.

Realizing we may have passed up Your provision, we backtracked on I-80 and were thankful to see the sign still blinking: VACANCY. We paid and went to the room. It was dirty, the bed hadn’t even been made—but still we piled in, clinging to each other, nestled like spoons. Me with my arm around Annie, Annie with her arm around Sally.

O Lord, my girls. Help them. Though many of the women at the retreat were wonderful, surrounding us