I’ve said it for months, and every time I do, it’s still true. I have no idea how we got here. Just a second ago it was January and yet somehow here we stand in the middle of hot, firework popping, outdoor grilling June.

I suppose though, the events of the past ten months are answer enough for the time lapse. They’ve taken me through and to place of asking fundamental faith questions, the kind I never thought I’d wonder and in the process, I’ve made a mountain.

Little by little as I’ve walked through and around the grief, I’ve stacked the events of the past year – the things I don’t understand, the things that cracked my heart, the things that are hard to talk about, the things that have altered life forever –I have piled one on top of the other and created an Everest of reasons to not trust Jesus. And after piling them high, like any other mountain climber, I’ve gone for lots of walks among them. Up, up that mountain I walk, reciting them one by one, creating a rhythm to walk by.

There was this I start – the prayer I started a few months after Rhett was born, after that one morning when my dad showed up at my office and told me news outside on the sidewalk that I never imagined hearing. Incredibly rare genetic case. Nothing to do. First birthday. That prayer felt like the only thing I could do, so I carried it everywhere I went. Every night when I woke up at 2 a.m., I prayed it. I prayed it when I opened my eyes in the morning, as I got ready for the day, as I drove to work, as I sat at my desk, as I made lunch, as I walked to get coffee, as I talked with friends, as I made dinner, as I folded laundry or put away dishes, as I laid down to go to sleep. I prayed it, I asked, over and over, out loud and silently. Lord, please be with Rhett. God, I know that You are a Healer so I’m asking, Lord, that You please heal him. Nothing is impossible for You. Please, reorder his genetic makeup. Change it, Lord. There is nothing too difficult, nothing impossible forYou. God, please save him. But if not, Lord, please sustain him. In your power, by your power, let him live a long, happy, full life. Lord, let him grow old with a head full of gray hair. We will give you all the glory. But if not, God, please let his time here, with Matt and Sarah and Grayson, with the rest us, Lord, please let it be sweet. Let him know the how loved he is, how special and deeply thankful we are for him. God, he is a such gift. Comfort him, Lord. Strengthen him – and them. But God, I just want to be bold and very clear: I’m asking You to save him – here, with us.

We could talk about how that prayer wove itself so deeply into my habits that even when it was no longer needed, I found myself beginning it, only to catch myself and remember.

We could talk about the hospitals stays, all the scares, how I kept my phone close just in case something happened. We could talk about how Rhett William Rodgers is a deep and gracious gift. How he was a strong and brave boy and how looking into his eyes was like diving deep into the dark blue ocean. We could talk about how I had hoped, quietly, deep inside my heart and in my prayers that he would be the baby to miraculously push past the impossible one-year mark.

We could talk about the night that I prayed would never come. How, in between getting the call for prayers and the confirmation that he was with Jesus, that I knew sitting in an empty house wasn’t an option. So, ramming up against the question I couldn’t ask out loud and sitting in the silence of waiting for an answer, I decided to go to the same worship service I always went to on Wednesdays.

We could talk about how I sat on the floor at the back of the room, my back literally against a wall, hoping to hide in the dark. I remember thinking that even if I couldn’t sing the words of the songs that were being played on stage, my ears could still be filled with them.

I sat in that room, a place I’d been in a hundred times before and found myself praying a prayer I’d heard a thousand times before.

Lord, let this cup pass. Not my will though, but Yours.

That night I felt the desperate weight of those words, heavy in longing and tight with agony. So I sat and let the music of others who were strong in hope and sure of life pad my heart for a while.

We could talk about the next day, how I had to wake up and remember it was my birthday, how every time someone told me happy birthday that day, I wanted to tell them there was nothing worth celebrating. We could talk about how I’m not sure what to do with my birthday now.

We could talk about how the song “Come As You Are” and its lyrics, “Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal” chased me everywhere I went for a week.

We could talk about the words of the preacher – that Christians don’t bury, but instead plant in an act of faith, how grief is the price we gladly pay for love, love that will last forever.

We could talk about how months later, questions still drape everyday motions of life. How it feels like none of the outer circles of life – events and friends and work – have missed a beat, but on the inside, I’m still circling, circling this mountain, surrounded by a thick, morning fog, looking up in shock that it’s June and not January.

We could talk about how grief feels like a wild force that can’t be tamed. How it meets you at the most random places – like in the flower section of the grocery store, in an email at work or in days on the calendar. How it feels like a river that simply pushes you forward, sometimes gentle and suddenly at other times, dipping and twisting so strong you can barely catch your breath.

We could talk about how much of this wild and brutal reality I can’t make sense of, how there’s so much that I get turned around on. We could talk about how I have no idea how to handle all these pieces or if I have the capacity to. We could talk about how I know He is faithful and true, but that it all still feels like broken promises, how it’s too much to be asked of, to be expected to be comfortable and how the idea that joy can come from mourning like this feels both ludicrous and cruel.

Up, up, down, down. Up, up, down, down. Over and over, again and again it goes, I go. I feel with almost every step the temptation to stay up here forever. It’s much easier to feel like I have a right to be mad at God up here.

And yet, even as I huff and puff through and around my mountain, I’ve gotten a hunch that even if I decided to build a cabin on this mountain and spend the rest of my life with arms crossed, head bowed and heart closed, God would just move right in. And then He would find me on my windy, self-made trails every day. He’d join me in the up, up, down, down. And as we went, I believe He’d start like this, Okay, let’s go over it again. One by one, over and over, as many times as you need.

It reminds of Job. Last fall, I threw myself down into his story like it was a well, looking to find something, anything, anyone acquainted with sorrow too big and deep for words. And that I did find. I found someone who lost greatly, beyond anyone else. But the other thing I found, down in that well? God. Gorgeous, gracious, beyond all my understanding God – and with language that left me gob-smacked. In the face of utter wreckage, total devastation, He climbed down into that well with me and Job. I couldn’t escape Him. And even more, like a burning sunset in the western sky, I found myself drawn to Him, filled with questions that screamed for answers, but silenced still by His presence.

He has jumped down into a well for me and He’s climbed up a mountain, too. For the past few months, in nudges, in pokes, in gentle prodding, He’s shown up, unwilling to let me swing into this wild and deep mountain alone. We serve a mountain-climbing God, y’all.

I want detailed answers, the whys and the how comes, ones that will make sense of it all. I want dreams to be reality and I think I could spend my whole life going up and down the mountain looking for them all – under rocks, behind trees, in the fog that passes overhead. But detailed explanations don’t belong to me, they’re not owed to me either. Instead, what He’s chosen to tell me is I’m here. Wait. Hope is ahead. In a hundred small and quiet ways He has said, “You can question all you want – I’m not going anywhere. We walk this together.”

Even on this mountain of misunderstanding, even as doubt and accusations stand just inside the tree line, their shadows flickering in the sun, even here I can’t escape who God is. Amidst my heap of doubts and accusations, He shows up –to comfort, to point ahead, to just be with me. My attempts to push Him away work as well as pushing back the wind.

I don’t know what mountain you’re on right now, but wherever you are, know that it’s okay to push back and away for a time. Go ahead, feel all the feelings. Ask the questions that are simmering, especially the ones that feel wrong to say out loud. God is not thrown off by a single one of them. In fact, I believe there’s a backwards magic in saying those things out loud. Bringing them into the light destroys the power they hold and God uses them to bind us up and back to Him. We can’t escape who God is. As skilled as we may be at making mountains, He’s better still at climbing them.

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Then Job replied: “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the arm that is feeble! What advice you have offered to one without wisdom! And what great insight you have displayed! Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth? The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them. The realm of the dead is naked before God; Destruction lies uncovered. He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight. He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it. He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness. The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke. By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces. By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the gliding serpent. And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?” {Job 26}