I wrote Trusting God Again: Regaining Hope after Disappointment or Loss (224 pages) in the summer of 1994, and it was published by InterVarsity Press in June 1995. Though the book is an extended meditation on the Book of Job, the problem I was trying to "solve" in the book was how to explore the means or mechanism to enable a person to move from "distress" to "trust" in life. I introduced those concepts in my 1993 book, Longing for God, when expositing some Psalms.

My first study the Book of Job began late in 1989 when I was asked to lead a Lent 1990 study on it for residents of Willamette View Manor in Milwaukie, Oregon. Trusting God Again is the result of my second "run" through Job. Though I neither used the Hebrew text nor did any detailed exegesis in this book, I think that I captured a number of themes that not only informed my subsequent (2004) treatments of Job but were the germs of a new and unique way of reading the book.

Trusting God Again, however, was meant to be a book for lay people combining thoughtful biblical reflection with stories of actual people in distress so that we could understand the relationship of loss and biblical faith. One of the wise endorsers of the book, Yale Divinity School Professor Nicholas Wolsterstorff, whom I asked to endorse the book after reading his moving account of his son's tragic death (Lament for a Son), succinctly summed up the major point of the book: "The authors....don't conceal that fact that suffering endangers trust..." Ah, that says it better than I ever did in the book, I believe.

The following excerpt comes from the story of Tedd and Julie, whom I introduced earlier in the book. They lost their 2 year-old son Will in a tractor accident in 1993. The following appeared in chapter 9, "Listening & Seeing Differently (Job 32-42)."

Trusting God Again: Regaining Hope after Disappointment or Loss, pp. 184-187.

Tedd and Julie's New Eyes

When I visited with Tedd and Julie at their home ten months after the death of their son Will in a farm accident on April 10, 1993, they told me the following story.

Tedd returned to work at the bank on Monday, April 19. In ten days everything had changed for him and Julie and their son, Wes. They had thought they were in control of their lives, but now they knew they were not. They had nothing to replace the empty feeling inside. Tedd, very conservative by nature, is a banker and a farmer--a Kansas banker and farmer. He did not believe in miracles. He believed in God and hard work and family and tradition, and if you believed in all of these things and worked your tail off, maybe the ground would yield for you and your family. That was Tedd's simple but profound creed.

The first day back in the office, Tedd noticed an old man standing outside his office. He was a rancher who did business with the bank but not directly with Tedd. He would see the man about six times a year; they would exchange pleasantries, discuss the price of cattle briefly and then return to their lives. The man was a lifelong rancher, a man in his eighties, a man whose leathery hands and sober demeanor bore witness to his long toil on the Kansas prairie.

Instead of poking his head in Tedd's office to exchange greetings, the man was quietly waiting outside the office. Tedd had a client and could not get to him for about forty-five minutes. Tedd thought, He is waiting to extend condolences. Even though they didn't know each other well, the old man would ceratinly have known that Will had died.

After his client left, Tedd went out to greet the old rancher. The man quietly asked if he could talk to Tedd and Tedd's father, Bill, who was driving the tractor when the accident happened. Bill also worked at the bank. They went into Bill's office and the old man began to talk. He cleared his throat. He was a proud man, a person who knew and taught that you had to be tough to make it in life. He was no sentimentalist. His first words were, "You may think I'm crazy for saying this." Tedd did, at first. Then, he didn't. Here is the old man's story.

"'The biggest blessing I have had in life was my wife Margaret. She died last year, and I have been so alone without her. I want to tell you, that though she is gone, Margaret and I still talk to each other."

Tedd distinctly remembers thinking, "Yep, this guy is crazy!"

Then he continued, "While I was talking with Margaret just the other day, she was telling me that they have a new little boy with them. She didn't know his name, but she wanted to tell me about the boy."

A lump began to form in Tedd's throat. Then the man decribed the boy, and he mentioned five or six distinctive things that only Tedd or Julie would have known about Will. he said, "Margaret told me that she went up to the boy to try to talk to him, but he was very shy and turned away."

Tedd thought, Sure, that is what Will used to do, but perhaps 50 percent of two-year-olds are shy.

The old man said, "So Margaret asked him if he wanted something to eat." The old man shook his head. "Margaret said that the boy, though he knew the words, just started to point to everything that he liked and that he ate everything, bread, vegetables, meat, without complaint and very quickly."

Tedd began to think, This is my boy. This is Will.

"After the meal," the old man continued, "Margaret tried to put him down for a nap. But he held out both hands, as if to stop her and ward her off." The old man held out his leathery hands straight from his body, as if to imitate the motion of the little boy. Only Tedd and Julie knew that Will did this every time that they tried to put him down for a nap. By this time Tedd was fully absorbed in the story.

"But what I really wanted to tell you," the old man said, "was that later on Margaret was out picking flowers, and the little boy came up to her with his hands behind his back, picked a flower and handed it to Margaret." (Will always walked with his hands behind his back, and he loved to give his mother flowers.) "Then Margaret said to me that the little boy will be fine, and she will take care of him." Without a word, the old man picked up his huge Stetson hat and left. Neither Bill nor Tedd said a word.

Emotionally drained by this time, Tedd dashed out of the office and began walking. I need some breath, was all that he could think. I need to talk to someone. But who? He headed over to his church, two blocks away. While on the way he thought, I have never spoken to a pastor about anything like this. What will the pastor think of me?

Tedd entered the church and came into the office of the associate pastor. She was preparing her sermon for the next Sunday and happened to have a book by Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry, on her desk. The book was open to a story of Buechner's dream of a dead friend, a dream in which the friend was very alive and real. After the dream, Buechner found a piece of his friend's blue wool seater in his (Buechner's) bedroom, and there was no way the piece of the seater could have gotten there by "natural means."

The pastor had been pondering this passage and thinking about the many ways in which her faith had been stretched of late. When Tedd burst in and told his story, it was like a message of God telling her to continue looking for traces of the hand of God in out-of-the-ordinary places. Tedd was amazed at her affirmative response, and he rushed home to tell Julie.

Ten months later, when I interviewed them, Tedd and Julie still remember that day vividly. They have taken it to mean two things: that Will is in God's good care and that this universe and God are simply so vast that he sometimes breaks out of our preconceived, limited understanding of him. They see the old man's story as one of the "mall miracles" (they now believe in little miracles!) that God has brought into their lives since Will's death to confirm his continuing care for them. They have learned to hear and see differently since April 10, 1993.

 

Concluding Note: Tedd and Julie have since had two more children, both girls, to join their older brother Wes. A family that was 3/4 male is now majority female.

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