Standing, at midnight, at the window overlooking the ink black Puget Sound, I imagine I am you, a world away from America, I close my eyes and grow five inches taller, more than twenty years older.
You speak proudly of your home, built by you and your mother when you were eight. No electricity but running water, which was rare in the area. You speak confidently of your path in life, Shepherd Lauriat, an impassioned road that you walk with God. You speak gently of your love for my mother, unshaken, unbroken, a constant for almost half a century. You are without doubt, worry or shame. Your God has no room for shame.
Solin? If I buy your plane ticket, will you bring your God to America?
I’m not sure who is killing us faster: The foreign extremists who hate us for our “opulent liberalism” or the native extremists who feel the same way. One set of terrorists take our lives. The other set takes our God. Without God, we are desolate and alone.
In the spring of 2005, when the first crocuses pushed into the cold, fresh air, a friend of mine attempted suicide. He left a note behind for God. He grieved. He was so sorry. But he could no longer live a lie. Alone in the world, no family, no partner, few friends, he had devoted his time to scripture, to art, to writing. His God, seen only through a mirror darkly, was a God of shame. Of fighting every thought, impulse and emotion. And at twenty-one years old, after eight years of actively fighting himself, Jared had had enough of shame. It would be better, he thought, to end his life, than to disappoint his God.
You wouldn’t disappoint Solin’s God, Jared. It was Solin’s God who sent Jay and Mike, then strangers, twenty year old Mormons on their mission, to your door that day, to glimpse you through the window, break the glass and call 911. It was Solin’s God who blessed you with Jay, still in your life to this day, and for forever.
When you bow your head in prayer, He is already there; He has been waiting for you all day. And shame isn’t in His vocabulary.
Happy first anniversary, my friends. God bless.
E.J.
