It’s a good idea not to quit the story before you know the end. That is part of why suicide of a friend or acquaintance leaves us so broken. Not only do we feel a ripping powerlessness, we grieve the end of a story that might have been.
I’m not saying there’s a happy ending for every story, a box and a bow for every tragedy we’re called to deal with, but I am saying that there is such a thing, on this earth, as redemption. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. I believe in it, plead for it, and try to prepare the soil for it.
Nicole Nordeman, that woman of incredible pen, put it this way: I believe in the rest of the story / I believe there’s still ink in the pen. But that’s hard to take in if you’re so full of longing and so empty of hope that hope of any kind feels like a whip hitting again and again against the rawness of your heart. There is a season for hope, but there is also a season for blind faith, for murky wanderings, for hands that push against the fog for a door, or window, or hole in the roof big enough for a straw bed.
The Old Testament tells the story of a woman who felt that sting and rawness, and I wonder if we can borrow some essential truth from her life, because sometimes we Christians, who are to live in community, need to borrow from each other when we run out.
Born with a name that meant “pleasantness,” she asked to change it to “bitter,” because she went out full of life and hope and joy, and came back full of pain and sorrow and, well, bitterness. She had nothing left, it seemed to her. She followed her husband to another country, and was shamed for it. There, far from home, she lost her husband first and then her two sons to death. But, as ragged as her faith was, she must have done a good job of modelling it because one of her daughter-in-laws embraced it, and insisted on following her, empty-handed and empty-hearted, back to her home country. That daughter-in-law, of foreign tongue, land and gods, spoke words to her that are perhaps some of the greatest words of love recorded in Scripture. Words often spoken at weddings, words my husband and I spoke to each other that beautiful day we were wed. So loved, a broken Naomi took a long journey again — back to a place and people she was sure would judge her; so sure that she changed her name to “bitterness,” just so no one would expect anything else. If you go in hanging your head, she thought, maybe tongues won’t wag so hard. Maybe someone, somewhere will have grace.
Grace happened. But you have to read all the way to the end of the story written in a book of Scripture called Ruth. Bitterness turned to joy, and what was empty and hopeless became full again. Without children and home and land, Naomi was remembered by God. The daughter-in-law who followed when there was nothing to hope for — her daughter in the faith — became the key to a future Naomi couldn’t have imagined. In the end, she became the great grandmother of a king who is central in the story of God.
Next time I’m tempted to bitterness, bring to my mind that the end of my story is not yet written. There’s still ink in the pen. And that’s true for you too.
(Here’s the whole song “Someday” by Nicole Nordeman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlwDu2xju3s)
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