“That’s enough. I get the point.”
“Then try it,” Ben said. “Try remembering through that lens.”
Frustrated, Sebastian rubbed his forehead.
“I can’t count the number of people who’ve tried to convince you to let them in,” Ben said. “You pushed them all away. Then you turned around and blamed God for your aloneness.”
Ben’s words cut through to the center of him with such accuracy that he couldn’t move.
The cars dashing past on the freeway became moving smudges of color as he forced himself to do what Ben had challenged him to do. To confront his history.
After the earthquake, God had given him the best gift Sebastian had ever received—the Colemans. A thousand times, God had shown Himself to Sebastian through their commitment, words, and love.
The day Sebastian wrecked his car, God had brought Leah into his life.
God had been there during every surgery Sebastian performed, faithfully healing the sickest children again and again and again.
In case he needed additional proof of God’s nearness, here was Ben, beside him today in this cemetery. Inarguable proof that even now, God hadn’t deserted him.
Sebastian could powerfully sense God in this moment. But it could be that God had been with him inallthe moments.
Some of the events of his life had been bad. But some had been amazingly good. If he could roll with the blessings God had extended to him, why had it been so impossible for him to roll with the hard?
Because he’d taken his mother’s death as evidence that God either wasn’t sovereign, wasn’t good, wasn’t powerful, or wasn’t involved.
Could he accept a more complex truth? That the God who’d let his mother die wasstillsovereign, good, powerful, and involved?
If he could accept that, then he could quit trying so incredibly hard to protect himself all the time.
He was tired... .
He was so very tired of protecting himself.
Ben knelt and placed his palm on the gravestone. He bent his head to pray.
Sebastian followed his lead. He went to one knee, which caused dizziness to scramble his senses. He hadn’t had enough sleep or food. Cold radiated from her marker into his hand.
He prayed for long minutes, doing his best to forgive God.
I forgive you, he repeated numerous times.
At some point, he finally started to mean it.
You could have saved my mom, but I forgive you for taking her.
He pushed the knuckle of his free hand across his eyes because he was crying.
Can you forgive me?he asked God.
Yes, came the immediate answer.
When he finally stood, his chest felt hollowed out, his body shaky. Yet something stable had taken root within him in the place where his anger and insecurity had been living.
Ben pressed to his feet. “What motivated you to come here today?”
“Leah and I broke up.”
“I figured,” Ben said. “Who broke up with whom?”
