Of Job, Refugees and Tea Bags

I was making my evening cup of tea, in preparation for curling up with a novel after a day of work and chores, when I decided that I needed to separate the tea bags.

We brought a giant bag of Typhoo tea bags back from England last month, you see, and Typhoo’s “Rainforest Alliance Certified” teabags come joined together by twos, Siamese tea twins, if you will. When I filled up our tea canister with Typhoo the other day I briefly considered separating each pair then dismissed it as far too faffy a task.

But tonight, after spending spending an extra 10 minutes in the kitchen carefully cleaning and seasoning our new cast iron skillet, I decided I simply had to separate the tea bags. As I stood there methodically tugging them apart, I remembered standing in that same spot a few months earlier. Andrew and I had been debating a major topic, a question I’d been wrangling with for a long time, and I found myself unable to even discuss it without tears.

“Wait,” I’d said, springing forward to the IKEA cart where we keep our drinks things. “Let me tidy up this Sweet ’n Low ramekin.”

My bemused husband watched and snickered as I carefully took the jumble of Sweet ’n Low packets out and vertically stacked them inside the ramekin. After sorting out the ramekin, I took a deep breath and said, “Now I can talk.”

“What WAS that?” Andrew asked me. “If anyone around here is a perfectionist then it’s me, not you.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s just that, well, everything in life is such a mess. And apparently my psyche thinks if I can just sort out one little tangled jumble then I’ll have a tiny little modicum of control over life. And I know it’s weird, but if I look at the tidy ramekin and take deep breaths I feel like I can face this conversation.”

Andrew is right. I’m not a perfectionist. I like to do my best in everything but, honestly, I am OK with quitting when it’s hometime and so forth. Perfectionism really isn’t my modus operandi.

So tonight, as I stood there pulling apart the twinned tea bags, and remembering how I'd felt compelled that day to reorganize my shelves and filing cabinets, I said aloud (to the dog) “I must really feel out of control.”

And I do. We’ve been living with sustained stress and a rising and falling current of loss for many years now, and apparently it is really starting to sink in that I really, truly am not in control.

This piece isn’t meant to be a sob story, so I won’t dwell on the hard stuff. Suffice to say that since we moved to America three years ago (an extremely stressful period in itself), we’ve dealt with loss from culture shock, from financial loss and the loss of Andrew’s thriving Nottingham career. We’ve known the grief of being far from our English family and friends and, most especially, have become unwilling bedfellows to the pain of ongoing infertility, which began before we left the UK but through the years has strengthened into a major thread of our life story.

Of course wonderful things can happen when you invite God in to let fiery trials do their work and mold you into something new, and we’ve experienced the fruit of God refining us again and again over the last three years. We are each better people, and our marriage shines more for it, because of beauty wrought in suffering. And this is not to say we've spent the last three years crying. Daily life has been, for the most part, quite good. We've had amazing experiences and made lifelong friends, and we know God has used us mightily in our own spheres, too. I love my work, challenging though it is, and Andrew daily makes children laugh and feel loved through the extracurricular programs he runs while getting his master's in elementary education. We made the right decision to move here. But that big stuff: family, home, stability, constant wearing stress, the nudging reminders of grief, that stuff has been hard.

“Beloved,” the Apostle Peter reminds me in 1 Peter 4:12-13—and I do love that word ‘Beloved’ because I know that although Peter is doing the writing God is doing the speaking— “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

Yes, there is comfort in knowing that I am not the first to suffer, and that good can come out of it. But lately I am well aware of suffering in the world, suffering that makes my own loss pale in comparison.

Tonight as I worked on that cast iron pan I listened to the World Service, and to the sound of Middle Eastern refugees panicking at the Croatian border, which had been closed to them. I heard a woman crying, “My baby! My baby! How long do we wait? I need food for my baby!” and I wanted to weep, too, for them and their plight, even for my own desire to have a baby to cry for.

“How long, oh God?” my heart cries out as I stand at the sink. “How long do your people suffer? How long do the women whose homes have been destroyed, who have fled for their lives, wait to see their children eat? How long do we wait for our own child? How long do we wait for the foster license, which seems as if it will never come? What about the extra bills and the car repairs and the 101 difficult things?”

These questions, and the heartache behind them, certainly aren’t new. Lately I’ve been studying the book of Job, and last night a J.I Packer article reminded me that Job teaches us how to suffer. All day, then I’ve been ruminating on that question: How did Job suffer?

After his indescribable losses of wealth, family, home, dignity, relationship and health, Job was shocked, he wept, he railed, he questioned. Ultimately, though, he was silent. Because God spoke to him “out of the storm” (Job 38:1) and asked him a question: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (38:2).

Job realized that, really, as much as he wanted answers and as much as he knew it was OK to ask God those questions, God made it very clear that, in this instance, Job was not in control. God was. Job’s response was to place his hand over his mouth and accept that he was not the one in charge.

I do not discount the role of the evil one in this world. Satan has great power, as is evidenced by wars sweeping across nations, children drowning, wombs inexplicably closed, and chancy real estate markets crushing one’s stability. Job’s story would not be were it not for the presence of Satan in it.

However, I also do not discount the power of God and, mainly, the power of his kingdom advancing through those who love him and seek him. As I constantly tell my middle school students, the kingdom of God is the place where God has his rule and reign. And I envision God’s people this way: as an army of light advancing into the darkness, destroying Satan’s rule and ushering in the joy, justice, peace and prosperity of the Risen Lord Jesus.

But that doesn’t mean advancing God’s kingdom is easy.

Car repairs are minor things, comparatively speaking, and so are bills. We will sort them out, we will find a way. We always do. Even our foster conversion license (which allows us to foster and then adopt a child from the system), which we’ve spent nearly two years pursuing, will arrive sometime. And I do believe, deep down, that we will have a biological child one day. Maybe it will be through medical intervention, maybe it will be a surprise.

I know that God hasn't forgotten us. I know that the Creator of the universe, the very One who laid earth’s foundations, loves me with a special, unique, tender and inescapable love. I know He hears my cries, He knows my pain and that He weeps with me. And I know that He smiles when he surprises us with a check at just the right moment or a particularly sweet moment of unity in our marriage, or a special cuddle from one of our friends’ children.

I know all of this, and still I long for more control. I don’t just want the tea bags to be separated, I want to know when the bills will be paid and when the child’s room will be filled and when the husband’s career will be returned one hundredfold. I want to be Job at the end of the story.

But for now, I bow to the strange, comforting peace that I am not in charge. The King is. He’s fighting the enemy yes, but, in the end, He wins. And I place my hand over my mouth.

Recommended Reading: The most helpful book I've read on suffering, other than the Bible: "A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament" by Michael Card

As this the first time I've written publicly about infertility, may I respectfully suggest folks refrain from giving us unsolicited advice? I fully understand how wonderful it was when your Third Cousin Myrtle conceived after dancing naked under the light of a harvest moon while eating pumpkin seeds, drinking herbal teas and, of course, getting acupuncture, adopting a child and "just relaxing" (now why didn't I think of that?!?!) at the grand old age of 43, but I don't think that particular story will help me. Thank you!