The congregation of Grace Fellowship Church were among the kindest people Stephen had ever met. In previous years, accompanying his mother on errands sometimes resulted in a chance meeting with the someone she knew from church. He had always been amazed at how she could bump into a random congregant regardless of what store or cafe they visited. Often, as if fate’s cup refused to be overfilled, within minutes of seeing someone she knew, others from her congregation would randomly appear. Stephen liked to joke with her about them dropping in from the ceiling rafters. As odd as the scene would become, he couldn’t help but enjoy how every church friend who had haphazardly appeared equally surprised and joyful to see the others. One would have thought they were long lost friends who hadn’t seen each other in years, instead of the actual four days which had passed from the prior Sunday.
His mother’s friends were always generous in their appreciation of his military service; no doubt enlightened by the near permanent placement his name had on Rebecca’s prayer lists. He lovingly harassed his mother for placing the details of his life upon a bulletin board for all to read. But he didn’t know exactly what they were praying for or how many lists his mother had put his name on. What he did know was that the congregants of Grace Fellowship Church were always aware of his deployments, surgeries, recovery progress and even his job hunt. That insight alone made Stephen a bit uncomfortable to be in their presence. It was awkward for him, not just because they seemed to know specifics of his life, but because he became convinced that when they said they were praying for him, they actually were. He didn’t know these people and they weren’t what he would consider personal friends, but they knew him. They didn’t know him just through periodic updates provided by Rebecca, but through the fact that they actively thought about him on a regular basis.
He never felt anything but compassion in their tone, but he had no desire to get to know them any better. Even when they would repeatedly invite him to another random church event, he found it easy to say no without even the burden of coming up with an excuse. Stephen’s agnostic views of religion and faith had been hardened by glimpsing the world through a gritty lens which only drew his attention to its blemishes and imperfections. Experiences of his own life taught him that it was too far of a stretch to buy into the idea of a caring god. If there was some almighty deity up there, Stephen didn’t think he had a much of a care for the broken and messed up people he had created.
Church was his mother’s hobby. He was glad she had somewhere to belong and be social with but to Stephen’s irritation, he watched her use her faith as a crutch. Whenever she struggled with something she would talk to him about “turning it over to the Lord.” She talked to him about things like giving up control and trusting in Jesus for strength, but Stephen lived in the real world and knew he had real people relying on him. In his mind, Stephen didn’t have the luxury of reaching out for a crutch. He felt he had responsibilities and it was up to him to resolve complexities in a practical way.
As he led Hailey and Sarah down the center aisle, Stephen recalled a regretful conversation he had with Rebecca just a couple of weeks before. He had gotten overly worked up when his mother had challenged him on his dismissal of her faith. Unintentionally, Rebecca had released a dam of pent up emotion and Stephen berated her with rhetorical questions about God’s goodness. He questioned where that goodness was during the atrocities being committed by God’s supposed devotees who slaughtered hundreds of innocents in Fallujah? Or The Almighty’s whereabouts when that brutal roadside explosion hit them and the deadly chaos which followed. He told her about the little boy laying under the ruble of that blown out room, a rifle clenched in his hand. A rifle meant to kill Americans. A rifle that could have easily been used to kill him, if some other soldier hadn’t first blown that little boy out of a window. With accusation dripping from every word, he dismissed everything she claimed to stand for, “Where’s God’s goodness in that?”
Rebecca had made an attempt to back off but Stephen couldn’t calm himself. A door had been opened and he continued arguing with her about when he and Waters laid there shot up and ready to die in that random, busted out Iraqi building. He pressed at how that it wasn’t some all-caring deity who opened the twenty foot hole in the exterior; that modern take on parting the Red Sea was done by his brothers in an Abram tank. Rebecca had made a heartfelt plea for her son to look through the pain and see the gifts he had been given, the life he had been blessed with. But Stephen’s ears were closed and he drove a hammer into the nail of his mother’s undeserved punishment by throwing the unanswerable at her. “Tell me Mom, what sort of a ‘loving father’ would let his child get cancer if he could control it. No,” Stephen had protested, “God either didn’t care, or he wasn’t capable. Let me know when you figure out which one it is.”
Her tears had flowed freely at the revelation of just how deep a well her son’s pain drew from. But despite his hostility, she was ready to forgive him as easily as if his eight year old self had dropped a cookie on the floor. She made apologies for upsetting him and reminded him of how a mother’s love endures through difficulties and differences. Stephen acknowledged her amends but only granted a curt, “I’m sorry, too.” While inside, the eight year old boy just wanted to curl into her arms and be comforted by the warmth of his tender mother.
During their next meeting together, Stephen brought the situation up and Ray talked about how it wasn’t entirely uncommon for returning soldiers to respond with an excess of explosiveness when they get upset. Ray wasn’t the type of guy to dish out heavy doses of absolution. But he did help Stephen understand that there was a reason Rebecca had struck such a nerve in their conversation. It actually had nothing to do with the conversation about religion but instead, it was Stephen’s outlet for a lot of other anger he had built up.
“We hold our tempers in public out of fear of a public scorn. The people we’re most comfortable giving that wrath to is actually our loved ones.” Ray had explained with a calming but assertive tone, “It’s like our wall comes down and we can relax with them. Unfortunately for them, some of those walls that come down are there for a purpose. Family members are the ones who are always around and we unconsciously we think they’ll continue to put up with us, regardless of how badly we treat them. Plus we usually have enough history with them to find an unburied hatchet lying around that we can just grab and use. In the end, our loved ones make the best targets.”
“So what you’re saying is that the problem is with me again?” Stephen retorted with an unsaid admission of the obvious.
“Listen Stephen. The things you’ve been through, some of them were pretty bad. I ain’t gonna lie to you. That stuff don’t just go away. That probably won’t ever go away. You need to understand that it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, but it is your problem. So quit trying to figure it out and instead, just deal with it. And that starts with acknowledging that the pain is still there.”