The End and the Beginning - part 2

The main issue that was weighing down my heart stemmed from the death of a friend, Brian Defazio, on June 1st,2004. He was only 25 years old when he fell to his death while doing his window washing job. He was Jason’s best friend since they were toddlers, the best man in our wedding, the lead guitarist in Jason’s band and a precious friend to me and many others. While most people have a few really close friends and many acquaintances, he seemed to have the exact opposite.
I couldn’t understand why God would allow this, why He didn’t stop it. Brian had so much more to offer to this world. He wasn’t done yet, I thought. The pain was unbearable. There were no satisfactory answers to my questions from God, Jason or anyone. It wasn’t fair. I was also paralyzed with fear that something like this could happen and would happen again at anytime to someone I love. I felt betrayed by God, like I put all my trust in Him and then He let this happen. Of course there are no guarantees that these things won’t happen. I don’t even know where I got the idea that this tragedy and pain wouldn’t be a reality in my life when it certainly is in everyone else’s. I sort of knew intellectually that there’s no way God could betray me but it FELT that way and I couldn’t shake it for nearly two years! I rarely read my Bible or prayed. I didn’t want to talk to Him. I felt I couldn’t trust Him. He didn’t feel safe anymore. I know now and I knew then that these struggles were based on feelings and not on facts but what can I say? My feelings were hurt. My heart hurt more than I knew it could. I’m sure the fact that I struggle with medical depression sometimes anyway didn’t help anything. I crashed big time into the depths of despair. I stuffed my hurt, my doubts and my questions down somewhere deep inside, closed the door and threw away the key.

It’s funny though….when you keep stuffing and stuffing eventually stuff starts to seep through the cracks and under the door. It happened to me on a couple of Sunday’s when I would cry through the sermon and at the Casting Crowns concert the hinges started to come loose and things almost got really messy but I managed to keep the door closed for one more week.

I went to the one day women’s retreat feeling pretty numb and not expecting anything really. I’ve already told the story of the first half of the day. There was another speaker after the small break where we were assigned to hug strangers around us. The speaker’s testimony was powerful and my eyes started leaking again. I was starting to break down and then we broke for lunch and once again I went on like nothing was wrong. We laughed and chatted over lunch like all was well.

After lunch we returned to the sanctuary and kicked off the second half of the day with some praise and worship music. I started to lose it a few songs in and when we sang “Blessed Be The Name of the Lord”. When we got to the part that goes “You give and take away, You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be Your Name” the door holding in my pain came off the hinges and everything came spilling out. I couldn’t hide my tears so I ran to the bathroom to hide in one of the stalls. Thankfully the bathroom was empty and I was able to sob long and hard and get some stuff out.

After 10 minutes of this, someone entered the bathroom and took the stall next to me. I tried to calm down and not make any noise that would give me away. I thought I was doing a pretty good job but then a voice said “I feel like I’m in a confessional. I hear you weeping and I could pray with you if you like. Do I know you?”