When Rain Falls Like Lead: Exploring the Presence of God in the Darkness of Suffering

By Andrew Percey

Exploring the question 'Where is God when we suffer?" through biblical, theological and personal narratives.

Why suffering? Why pain? Why? Are there any answers to that question? Where is God in the middle of this? This is the question at the heart of scripture and key to the identity of the people of God throughout the ages. This unique, biblically-rooted and pastorally-focused book explores these questions, engaging both the biblical narratives as well as our personal experience.

"This poignant work, based in part on the author's own loss and grief, doesn't just provide a study of the issue; it speaks words of genuine hope. This is first-rate pastoral counselling direct from a broken heart. With a searing vulnerability the reader is drawn into a raw edged story of ongoing suffering."
- David Coffey OBE, Global Ambassador, BMS World Mission

"Andy Percey has written a most moving lament for a beloved sister. The answers he comes up with, if we can call them answers, are theologically robust and pastorally heart-warming. I am really glad this book is now out there."
- Ian Stackhouse, Minister of Millmead, Guildford Baptist Church, UK

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authentic Publishers
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780783130

Andrew Percey

Andy Percey is married to Bex and, together with their son Leo, they live in Bath, where Andy is the minister of Manvers Street Baptist Church.

Book preview

2012

Introduction

As I entered the third year of studies at Spurgeon’s College, I had to choose whether or not to do a dissertation. As I watched those around me think about what they could write about, for me there was only one thing I felt able to spend that much time exploring. The results of that journey, you see before you today.

Expanding my dissertation into this book was, however, a much harder decision, not just because of the significant challenge of increasing the length and expanding the content, but because of the challenge of sharing with a wide audience something that had until now been shared with only a handful of people. During my time training at Spurgeon’s College, and my time in pastoral ministry, I have had the opportunity to be involved in several Baptist churches. Having now been in ministry for four years, I have come to the belief that we don’t ‘do’ suffering well in church. In a recent conversation with a person suffering from long-term illness, it was highlighted to me that when suffering continues, we aren’t sure how to engage with the person. We work much better when illness or grief is temporary and the person can return to ‘normality’.

However, most of us at some point in our lives will face times where we do not feel ‘normal’, either through illness (mental or physical), loss, or other experiences of suffering. These can be long-lasting times when we feel that those around us cannot engage with us, and even God seems to be absent.

You will see the reason for the title of this book in the opening chapter, but needless to say we all go through times when the rain falling in our lives falls more like lead than water; when every second and drop feels like a body blow to the soul we will never recover from. Where is God when the rain falls like that? For me, that was the only question I could deal with as a dissertation subject, and is what I have sought to explore with you.

Writing this book has been both a painful and a healing experience. I do not seek to offer any answers to the questions that have eluded the best and brightest human minds throughout the ages. I do, however, hope that we might become more at home with the questions, and in that hope, I offer the following.

1.

Hannah

You can shed tears that she is gone

or you can smile because she has lived.

You can close your eyes and pray she’ll come back

or you can open your eyes to all she’s left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her

or you can be full of the love you shared.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,

or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her and only that she is gone,

or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind,

be empty and turn your back.

Or you can do what she’d want:

smile, open your eyes, love and go on.¹

I remember hearing once that when an author writes a book, the start comes naturally and it gets harder from there. And yet as I sit down to write about the events which are the focus of this chapter, almost eight years after they have taken place, I find that the words come much more slowly and with more difficultly than I had thought.

Of course, whenever you turn to remember the events of the past, you are often frustrated with the lack of clarity of recall. The memories of events which have shaped your life become almost hazy. Imagine you are walking along a misty beach, unable to see clearly, but are reminded of where you are by the sound of the odd lapping wave upon the shore. Memories can be like that sometimes.

What I do remember is that on Monday, 6 June 2005, the early morning rain fell like blocks of lead as I stood at 6 a. m. in the car park of Salisbury District Hospital. It had been a glorious early summer with wonderful sunshine. But as the hope of a new day rose with the sun, even as the darkness lifted, hope seemed hard to see.

I felt heavier as I stood there that morning, which was either due to the rain that was by now soaking my light summer coat, or my reflection on the sixty hours that had led up to that moment. What I was becoming increasingly aware of was that the pain and uncertainty of that weekend was about to solidify into a concrete reality which would change my views, my life and my world forever.

The story begins with infinitely more joy, on Tuesday, 7 May 1985 when Hannah Ruth Ferneyhough was born. (Our father died when we were very young. Mum remarried a few years later, and I took my stepfather’s surname.) I was fifteen months old when my sister was born, and the proximity of our age meant that our relationship was one of mutual torment at times, and deep affection at others. As we grew up, a relationship developed that was deeper than that of a brother and sister; it was a close friendship that was rivalled by few others. Hannah was a bright, loving girl who was full of life, and as she grew into a woman, love was the word that she personified. I can honestly say that through all the years we grew up together, she was always there for me; she loved me well, and was all that a brother and a friend could ask. Not that she was perfect – she could be a real pain in the neck at times, as all siblings can! – but it was her love that defined her. When Hannah was 7, our sister Grace was born. It was a joy to see the way that she loved Grace. Having been the younger child for seven years, she took to the role of big sister very well.

I also had the joy of seeing both my sisters get married. It was on 31 July 2004 that Hannah married Andy. My sister, my dearest friend, was dressed in white and looked as beautiful as the first flowers of a new spring, carrying with them all the hope of a glorious summer yet to come. She was filled with such happiness. She seemed to float through the day; it was as though her dreams formed a carpet that was spreading out before her.

Over the coming months there were many occasions when we sat and talked about the future, dreaming of what might be, playing the mental images of the life that Hannah and Andy would share together. Buying their first home, starting a family, watching their children grow up as we all enjoyed Christmases, birthdays and countless barbecues – which were her favourite of all our family pastimes. Yet as I remember the hopes and dreams we all shared with Hannah and Andy, the ‘home cinema’ playing in my mind suddenly jars to a halt. I am returned to the darkness of that car park at Salisbury hospital, and the rain is still falling.

I was working in health insurance in 2005, and whilst I don’t remember much about my work days, I do remember Friday, 3 June.

Hannah and Andy were packing their belongings to move into their first home, which they had just purchased together, when she suffered a massive stroke. The scans would later reveal that the carotid artery in her neck had split, causing a haemorrhage which prompted a desperate rush to the hospital. My dad rang me and left a message to call home when I could; my initial thought was that he wanted me to pick something up from town on my way home. I walked across the road from where I worked to the payphone and called; I can’t remember why I didn’t use my mobile. Nothing could have prepared me for the news I was about to hear: ‘Hannah has been taken into hospital. They aren’t sure what’s wrong. It might be a really bad migraine, but it could be a stroke.’

Hannah’s condition worsened over the weekend, and by Sunday afternoon, less than forty-eight hours after her stroke, it was as if she had regressed to the mental age of a 2-year-old. Whilst on the Thursday night, just three nights before, she had held my hand as we said goodbye after dinner, on that day she tried to bite it with alarming force; this revealed to us with frightening clarity that her brain was shutting down. That night Hannah had a fit and slipped into unconsciousness, and as Andy and I rushed to her side in the darkness of that summer morning, a darkness of a deeper kind pierced the very corners of my soul.

Hospitals, especially the Intensive Care Units, have a sense of the inevitable about them; a quiet air of resignation that screams louder than any hustle and bustle that occurs within them. Would it be in this room that I would have to say goodbye to my sister? It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon when I slumped against the hall of the Intensive Care Unit corridor, realizing that even though I had been at the hospital for eleven hours, and had had only two hours’ restless sleep the night before, fear is powerful with all its adrenaline. It was a cruel adrenaline, though, tinged with just enough desperate hope to make what was to come even harder to take.

As I sat there, thinking, my brother-in-law sat down next to me.

‘Where’s this all-powerful God of yours now?’

Andy had always been respectful of my faith, and his words weren’t said in anger. It was desperation; he was asking, along with the rest of us, if God was there, then why didn’t he do something?

The hard thing was that I didn’t know how to answer his question. Where was God? Why had he allowed this to happen?

The doctors came at around 4 o’clock to tell us that they had been running several tests to check Hannah’s brain functions, to which she had not been responding. They explained that they had really only one left to run, which was a brain stem test, to check ultimately if her brain was still alive. They explained to us with a great deal of sensitivity that they were not expecting the outcome to be a favourable one, and as I walked outside to get some air, not knowing whether my sister was alive or not, I began to feel tired for the first time that day.

When I came back, we were all sat together in the ICU family room. My mind wandered back to the meal that Hannah and I had shared just days before. We had laughed; we had enjoyed our meal together, and had talked about how good life was. We’d met with friends later in the evening, and during a change in the conversation the subject moved on to faith. Hannah wasn’t always confident in a crowded discussion, but she had said, ‘Even though I sometimes swear too much when I’m angry, or occasionally have too much to drink, I know where I’m going.’

What an extraordinary and yet shocking statement for a young woman of 20 to make. Extraordinary because she had understood and grasped the reality of God’s grace through Jesus and let it take hold of her life; shocking because she had no idea of what was to come less than twenty-four hours later.

I was pulled from these mixed memories back into the silence of our room at the ICU. That silence, though, was soon to be brutally interrupted by the doctors who came with news of the test.

It was 6:01 p.m., Monday, 6 June 2005.

I remember where I was sitting, the expressions on the faces of those close friends and family, and yet I don’t remember too much of what the doctor said, other than that the test revealed that Hannah’s brain stem was no longer controlling her basic life functions, such as breathing. The machine she was attached to was keeping her body alive, but her brain was dead as a result of the massive stroke she had suffered.

Even eight years later, it is difficult to recall the emotions of that moment. In some way there was a feeling of being told something you had already worked out in your head, but desperately didn’t want to admit with your heart. Of course there was grief, and the tears fell as fast and heavily as the rain that had soaked me earlier.

Saying goodbye to Hannah was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I sat by her bedside, held her hand and sobbed alone as I looked at her. I told her that I loved her; that I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it; that I would see her again. I hugged and kissed her and wanted so desperately to hold on to her, hoping that as those first rays of sun in spring bring life to the sleeping world of nature, the warmth of my love and the longing in my heart might awaken her from the sleep into which she had fallen. And yet I knew that I had to let her go.

I stayed and watched my younger sister and several of Hannah’s friends say goodbye to her, and with each goodbye my heart broke all over again. Perhaps one of the hardest things in moments like this is to see those you love suffer so badly.

It felt impossible to see the pain of my parents and of my younger sister. My dad, who had been a strength to the whole family, finally broke down as we were about to drive home; memories of the pain of loved ones can be as real and lasting as any you feel yourself. It must have been 10 o’clock in the evening when we arrived home, but I remember the shock kicking in. I couldn’t be in the house; I desperately wanted to comfort my parents and my sister, but I just couldn’t be with them when they were hurting so much. As I walked around in the darkness and smoked my way through several packets of cigarettes, my mind went into a form of wakeful sleep and my mind began to wander. Was this real? Had this really happened?

The morning after was the cruellest of my life. Sometimes as you wake there is a moment, albeit very brief, where you are not sure if you are awake or dreaming. In that moment on the Tuesday morning I woke to feel as though nothing was wrong. And then, as consciousness drifted back in like a heavy fog rolling across a cold morning river… I remembered. And with that remembering the grief came freshly again, not like a wound that had been re-exposed, but like a fresh wound being cut below and through the old.

In the days and weeks that followed Hannah’s death, that grief took many forms – anger, despair, depression,