11

It Is Finished

MARCH

“I think I may be nearing the end,” Kit told Russell when they met for spiritual direction.

He sat forward in his chair. “The end of . . . ?”

“My active working life. My tenure at New Hope. It’s been niggling at me the past six months, I guess. Not strong enough on my radar to think about it deeply, not with everything else going on. But I’m paying attention to the disequilibrium and unrest I’m feeling, and I’m open to the possibility that it’s time for me to step aside and let new leadership emerge.” She glanced out the window at swirling snow. “I’m tired, Russell. And I don’t think it’s just a physical tired.”

He waited for her to say more.

She ran her hand slowly along the armrest of the couch. “I spoke to one of the board members yesterday and told her what I’m praying about. She didn’t seem surprised. We’ve been together in discernment for the past few years, and neither of us has ever had a sense it was time for me to step away. Until now.”

He was silent a moment, then said, “When you think about leaving New Hope, what happens in your spirit?”

She closed her eyes and imagined herself clearing out her office and turning in her key. “I feel sorrow. Like a good chapter is closing. But also relief. And gratitude.”

The parts of her job she had loved most—leading retreats and offering spiritual direction—could continue in a different way. She could offer spiritual direction in her home. And New Hope hosted many events with other facilitators. She might still be able to lead her fall Sacred Journey retreat. Or facilitate the occasional workshop. If the Lord led her to do it.

She kept imagining each ending, each change. “The more I think about it, the more I feel peace. Without any twinge of regret.” She opened her eyes again.

“That’s an important observation,” Russell said.

Yes. It was. She would need to test that movement of her soul, though, and make sure there wasn’t something she was running from or ignoring. She would do what she had counseled others to do in discernment: make a nonbinding decision within herself and see if the sense of consolation deepened over the next few days. She would ask God for the gift of holy indifference, for the grace to choose whatever would bring him glory and honor and lead to his deepening life in her. She would ask him to deliver her from any fear that might cloud her listening. And she would ask him to guide her in joy.

She wove her fingers together in her lap. “I think the stirring is coming to the surface now because of something that happened during one of the retreat sessions a few weeks ago.” As Russell listened attentively, she told him how she had sensed the Lord’s invitation to share part of her story and how that had led to a difficult, forthright conversation with Sarah. “I told her we both need to have the freedom to steward our stories with truth and grace. And I reassured her that I would continue to honor her part of the story. That’s hers to tell, if she chooses to.” She breathed slowly. “I just want to make sure that in light of all this, I’m being led forward, not driven.”

“Tell me more about that,” he said.

Kit inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I want to be sure any potential negative fallout from my sharing at the retreat isn’t driving my thoughts about leaving. Not that anyone on the board is concerned about what I shared or how I shared it. But I do wonder, going forward, what other possibilities might open for me to speak vulnerably about my experience with depression, once I’m not serving as the director there.” She paused. “Honestly, leaving my job feels like both a culmination and a beginning.”

“Like a birth,” he said.

Yes, she thought. Like a birth. Or a death with a promise of resurrection.

Kit was working at her desk later that afternoon when there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she called.

Wren entered, a sheepish expression on her face. “Gayle said you were done with your meeting, so . . .”

“Right, it’s fine.” She set down her pen and pushed aside a stack of papers.

Wren held up her phone. “I may regret this later, but I just sent a text to Casey’s mom.”

Kit tried to conceal her surprise. “Did you?”

“I couldn’t let it go. I felt like I wanted to at least explain that I didn’t intend to cause them any hurt. Could I read you what I wrote?”

“Of course.”

Wren sat down on the edge of a chair. “‘Hi, Mrs. Wilson,’” she began, her voice soft. “‘I’m really sorry you were upset when you found out we had a small memorial service to honor Casey. It was important for me to have a chance to say goodbye to my friend, and when my pastor offered to lead one, I said yes. I never intended to cause you or Brooke or the rest of the family any hurt.’” She looked up, as if seeking approval.

Kit nodded her encouragement.

Wren cleared her throat. “‘Casey was like a brother to me. Even though I tried to love him well, I know sometimes I didn’t express that love in good and healthy ways. Please tell Brooke I’m sorry for any harm I caused her by not wanting to let go of our friendship. I wish things could have been different. I wish there could have been a different ending for all of us. But even with all the pain, I’m so grateful for the gift of your son and his friendship in my life. And I pray God’s comfort for all of you.’” She wiped her eyes. “And that’s it. I was going to write a whole thing about how wonderful it was that people came to faith at the service, but that felt like I was trying to justify it. And I was worried that might make her angrier. I had a part in there, too, about praying for Estelle, but I deleted that. I deleted everything that sounded like I wanted something from them.”

“That sounds very wise,” Kit said.

“Dawn thought it was okay, sending it like it was. I guess I needed to try for closure and forgiveness. And if she doesn’t reply, then I need to be okay with that somehow. I keep reminding myself I don’t have control over how someone responds to me. I only have control over how I respond to others.”

“You responded with grace and truth, Wren. I didn’t hear anything accusatory or angry or defensive in what you wrote.”

Wren looked up from her phone. “You don’t think it was selfish of me, wanting to ask for forgiveness?”

“Why would that be selfish?”

“So they wouldn’t be thinking hateful things about me. And so I wouldn’t stay stuck.”

Kit hoped her eyes communicated the tenderness she felt. “I love how you can even see that possibility and name it. That shows a lot of maturity.” And far more discernment, she thought, than she’d had at Wren’s age. “God can work through all our motivations—whether they’re pure or a bit tainted—to move his kingdom forward. And I think you took a step in that direction today.”

Wren glanced down again at her phone. “Thanks. I hope I don’t become obsessed over getting a reply. I need to be able to let it go. I hope I can.”

“You’ve done your part, dear one. You’ve said you’re sorry. And you didn’t frame it in a way that asked her to do anything for you in return. It’s up to her now, whether she’ll say yes to moving through her anger and bitterness or whether she’ll be consumed by it. That’s her choice.” Not an easy choice, Kit thought, and one that Casey’s mother would likely need to make many times as she journeyed through her grief. With her eyes still on Wren, Kit offered a silent prayer for the woman who had also lost a son.

Wren swiped her screen, then tucked her phone into her sweatshirt pocket. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

She hesitated, then said, “What happened after Robert left?”

“In terms of the divorce, you mean?”

Wren sat back in the chair. “I mean, you talked about him having an affair with Carol and how you needed to work through your anger and bitterness, but you haven’t written much about what happened between you after the divorce. Just that he died seven years ago.”

Kit ran her hand slowly along the edge of her desk. “I was angry for a long time,” she said. “Not just at Robert and Carol, but at God too. I felt betrayed. Like so many of the promises I’d believed about God weren’t true. All those verses about him watching over and protecting the ones who trusted in him? Not allowing any harm to come to them? I’d tried to make sense of them during my work as a hospice chaplain. But what did those mean to me personally after Micah died? After my marriage died?

“And then one day a very wise counselor I was meeting with suggested I needed to forgive God, which sounded completely blasphemous to me. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that even if God didn’t need my forgiveness, I needed to offer it. Or else I would forever harbor grudges against him and never fully entrust myself to his care. And I couldn’t live like that.”

“So, what did you do?”

She picked up her pen and clicked it. “I wrote God a letter. I offered him all my disappointment and named all my grievances in a raw, honest lament. The process of writing that letter and saying that I forgave him even if I didn’t understand him cleared the air between us, and eventually I was able to move into a different kind of trust.” She set her pen down again. “In many ways, the relationship I’d had with him before died, and there was no regaining it. Not to say that my relationship with him before all the heartache was better. In fact, I think I could safely say it’s deeper now. Harder. But deeper. Like a married couple that’s endured a fracture in their relationship and builds something even stronger because of it.”

They shared the silence awhile, and then Wren said, “What about with Robert and Carol? What happened with them?”

Kit stared at the empty ring finger on her left hand. “I worked through a process of forgiveness on my own. Neither one of them ever said they were sorry. And that was hard. They moved to Arizona not long after they were married. Sarah sometimes went to visit them. She was able to keep a good relationship with her dad, and on my good days, I was glad about that. For her sake. She got along well with Carol too. And Carol became a beloved grandmother to my granddaughters. Which was also hard for me.”

“I’m sorry,” Wren said quietly. “Is she still in Arizona?”

“No, Florida now. She remarried, and Sarah says she’s very happy.” Kit sighed. “I wish I had a victory testimony to share with you about it. I wish I could say we all worked through a process of forgiveness and that we were able to reconcile with one another, maybe even that we were able to have a Christmas dinner together with the grandkids. But that never happened. When Robert died, Carol called Sarah to give her the news, and Sarah told me. She and her family flew out for the funeral.” She paused. “And when all kinds of latent bitterness was suddenly tapped again in me, a wise friend suggested that perhaps I needed to forgive Robert for dying without saying he was sorry.” That was something she had occasionally invited the bereaved families to do after a hospice patient died, to offer forgiveness and seek closure for any of the unresolved conflicts and hurts. But that was before she had a list of them herself. “It took a while,” Kit said, “but I ended up writing Robert a letter too. And I buried it beside Micah’s tombstone.”

Wren was silent a long time. “I don’t know if I’ve thought of this before,” she finally said, “but I think maybe Casey was asking for my forgiveness. When he wrote the line about ‘If you paint Jesus saying, Father, forgive them, think of me,’ I thought maybe he was saying he was seeking God’s forgiveness. But maybe he hoped for mine too.” She looked at Kit. “I thought there would never be any closure for me after he died. But maybe there is. Even if it’s not the kind I expected.” She rose to her feet. “It’s like you wrote in one of my letters, that we need to trust in the good ending for the whole story. Even if the chapters don’t finish the way we want them to.”

MARCH 11

My dear Wren,

I’ve been pondering one of Jesus’ final words today: “It is finished.”

What a glorious declaration. The work he had come to do, he had completed. He had purchased our salvation with his own blood. It was done. And no power of hell could make it come undone.

It is finished.

Those are words I need to keep rehearsing whenever I’m overwhelmed by all that is unfinished in this world and in my own life.

After my divorce was finalized, I bought the house you might remember (where you and your parents stayed for a few weeks when you first moved to America). Shortly after moving in, I decided I wanted more daylight in the family room, so I hired a company to put in a new window in a dark corner of the room and replace a couple of old windows on the side of the garage. The salesman told me ahead of time that I would need to stain the window frame when it was done, and I figured that wouldn’t be difficult to do.

A few weeks later the installer came and cut through the wall. I was amazed by the daylight that poured into the room. While he was working, I ran some errands and got home as he was packing up his truck. He told me he’d come back the next day to replace the garage windows. I thanked him and went inside to enjoy my new view.

But what I saw when I turned the corner into the family room made me feel sick. Yes, the window was in. But the wall above it and around it had been cut right through. There were gaps and holes everywhere—a mess that was far more complicated to fix than what I had initially agreed to. I knew I would need to hire someone to repair the damage that had been done. And that would mean spending far more money than I had budgeted. I regretted ever deciding to put in the window.

That night I spiraled. That one visual mess brought to mind all the other messes and chaos and brokenness in my life and in the lives of people I loved. So I did the best thing I knew how to do: I lamented. I protested. I expressed to God my frustration and anger. I pleaded with him to be the God I know him to be, to show his faithfulness and intervene in the lives of those who were crying out in desperation for him.

The next morning the installer arrived. But instead of beginning his work on the garage, he brought tools and materials into the house. Over the next few hours he spackled, sanded, and repaired all the cracks, leaving only a small portion of wall that would need to be painted.

As I stood in front of my new window that night, I heard the Lord address me with three penetrating words: Let. Me. Finish.

I was silenced before him. Such a convicting and authoritative word. And a place for me to find rest.

I’m so quick to assume outcomes. Maybe that’s one of the lasting wounds of my trauma: when I’m not spiritually attentive or when I’m physically tired, I mentally race to the worst possible ending. Hearing those three words that day shifted something in me. If I was going to let God finish his work, then I needed to practice waiting well. Waiting with patience and hope. Letting God be God and trusting him to fulfill his purposes. This, too, is part of lament. While we wait for God to act, we remember who he is and what he has done in the past so that we can trust him in the silence and hiddenness. We practice remembering. And we practice hope.

“It is finished,” Jesus says. It’s a bold declaration for us to make too. What does it mean to say “It is finished” when so much is unfinished? It means we are people who live hope in two directions, both backward and forward. We long for the kingdom to come in fullness, even as it has already come. And we trust that the One who has begun the good work in us and for us will indeed complete it.

With you,

Kit