God-Wrestling With Sister Mary
Article published in Northampton Living
(June 2022)
EXPERT CONTRIBUTOR
ROBERT ZUCKER
Grief Counselor, Consultant and Trainer
Consulting for the Journey
+1 413 695 4572
robzucker@gmail.com
robertzucker.com
If grief is a teacher, then perhaps we are all sometimes her reluctant students. My father died nearly half a century ago. After his funeral, Edith, one of Dad’s closest friends, offered me some rather blunt advice: “Rob,” she said, “you’ll never get over this.” I’ve always been grateful to Edith for letting me in on one of life’s best kept secrets; that our greatest losses may change us forever. What I also came to understand is that even unwanted change often presents us with opportunities for growth.
I remember working with Joan, who came to see me after her son’s sudden death. Before his death, Joan had always found comfort and strength from within her church community. But after he died, Joan was unable to go inside church without becoming physically ill and overwhelmed with anger at God. She tried each week, but always turned around, walked back home alone, and was filled with guilt for feeling rage at God and for failing to fulfill her obligation to attend church. I asked Joan if she’d speak with my friend, Sister Mary.
Following their first meeting, Joan told me,“Sister helped me understand that my anger at God is truly a reflection of my faith. And that perhaps the only way right now to relate to Him is to allow myself to express what I feel. Mary told me that I will always be blessed, regardless of my anger and whether or not I ever get myself inside of that church or any church ever again. And to top it off, she told me that she would be happy to meet with me so that we could fight with God together, side by side.”
Joan started taking turns meeting one week with me and one with Sister Mary. She and I worked on her loss and grief for her boy. And while I wasn’t sure exactly what Joan and Mary did together at their meetings, I often had the feeling that their work was something extraordinary. This was proven to be true when several years after Joan had finished working with me and Sister Mary, she called to tell me about a friend of hers whose husband had died and could benefit from grief support. I was about to tell Joan that I’d be glad to see her friend, when to my surprise she asked me for Sister Mary’s phone number.
There is a wry Yiddish saying that captures something about the universality of Joan’s struggles with anger, faith and grief: “If God owned a home on earth, all of God’s windows would be shattered.” While Joan eventually returned to church, her relationship with God would never be the same. Perhaps it had become a richer, more intimate relationship thanks to Sister Mary’s lessons in God-wrestling.
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