By The Reverend Amber Tremblett
The Reverend Amber Tremblett is a Wycliffe Alumna (MDiv, W20
21) and former Senior Student.
As I write this essay, I am recovering from a weekend during which anxiety took me outside myself. I’ll spare you the details, except to say it involved gastroenteritis and emetophobia. I have struggled with this irrational fear for most of my life. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to face it less and less. But because of that, when I do, it is way more debilitating. And this time, as I paced my bathroom floor, as the anxiety became more and more unbearable, all I wanted was for God to do something. To drive away my fear. I was desperate for the tangible sort of miracle that I sometimes believe other Christians are naïve for expecting.
All the theological education in the world could not have prepared me for the vulnerability I felt in that moment. Or for my utter disappointment at God’s seeming ignorance of my suffering. And I was angry with myself for not reacting in that moment in a way that affirmed what I know to be true about God.
Reflecting on it now, I recognize that there is a part of the human spirit that will always want more from God. That will long for manna to rain from the sky, or for sight in blinded eyes. This longing has always been apparent. We just need to read the psalms to see the evidence. Take Psalm 42, for example: “As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God” (NRSVUE). But of course, this is the case. God created us this way—with this desire to be in His loving presence. My longing for more of God is not a failure on my part to be grateful for what God does for me, and it is also not surprising. We are hardwired to be in relationship with God.
In my darkest moments, my desire for God is simply a normal response to my soul’s perpetual reaching out to its creator. In my darkest moments, my disappointment in God is simply a momentary forgetting of God’s immanence, of the truth that I am rooted in God’s love, that God’s love is wide and high and deep and right next to me. Which is understandable. When the body experiences stress, its only thought is survival. I could not think theologically about my faith while my body tried to decide whether to fight, flee, or freeze.
This experience, nonetheless, taught me something. At different stages of my life, I have found the strength of my faith in the transcendent nature of God. His all-encompassing love, his endless compassion and grace, His making all things new, His creative power in the universe. But lately, I feel as if God wants me to focus on His immanence.
I have been blown away by the Easter story and how intimate Jesus made the experience of the Resurrection for His beloved friends.
Mary went back to Jesus’s tomb just to be near him and was heartbroken to find it empty. “They have taken away my Lord,” she said, “and I do not know where they have laid him” (NRSVUE). She soon finds Him right next to her, calling her name. He is with her as she weeps, fulfilling His promise to never leave her. When Thomas comes back, having missed an encounter with Jesus, all he wants is to see Jesus for himself. He longs for time with his friend. And Jesus responds by doing what Thomas wants, by returning to the disciples and being with them again.
Mary and Thomas, they wanted what I wanted in my bathroom. They wanted more of God. And the fact that they got what they wanted is a promise to me that so will I.
So, my life becomes about practicing being aware of that promise of presence. That presence that is already no more or less than it will ever be—that is eternally and readily with me even when I am completely outside myself, feeling adrift and unanchored. God’s enduring presence in me is not dependent on my ability to recognize or embrace it. But oh, what a gift when I can. Whether in the moment or in hindsight, God’s rootedness in me is the well from which I keep going.
My task as of late has been locating that eternal tether when my anxiety is too much. Maybe in that moment of desperation I was looking in the wrong place. I wanted God to show up miraculously and was disappointed when I didn’t get what I expected. But what if the miracle was my husband knocking on the bathroom door asking if I was OK? What if it was my spiritual director reminding me that self-compassion is a spiritual practice?
What if being rooted in Christ’s love is saying no to isolation and accepting the gift of love offered on the ground by the people right around me? Because what is that if not the immanence of God? This latest foray into my anxious world has reminded me to look for God. In scripture and in prayer, yes, but also in all the moments of my life.
And you might be thinking, shouldn’t all this be obvious for a priest? Maybe. But I don’t think we are ever too experienced or educated or spiritually mature to not feel the impact of the simplest lessons God can teach us. No matter how close to God others perceive us to be. It is a miracle to learn these lessons over and over again, to be transformed by the same revelation over and over again, to be comforted by the same God who comforted Mary and Thomas, and who has comforted me all the days of my life.
On the other side of this suffering, my ability to see God has been renewed.
I see God cooking a meal on a beach for His friends.
I see Him as he cleans the dirt from under the toenails of His disciples’ feet.
I see Him making sure His mother is taken care of before He dies.
I see God weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, weeping as He comes alongside the world in its suffering.
And I see Him with me, pacing the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, responding to my “where are you, God,” with “I am here. I am here. I am here.”
