Last night, I joined a new creative writing group online. One of the participants was a woman in her early 40s who read us a story she had written. It told of a devastating tragedy she had experienced. Seven years ago, she was involved in a head-on crash that left her with terrible injuries and took the life of her seven-year-old daughter.
It would be nearly three months before this woman received the heart-breaking news for the accident had resulted in her being put into an induced coma due to the severity of her injuries. When she woke up, her first words were a desperate cry for her daughter.
It took five years and numerous surgeries to physically reconstruct her body, but no medical expertise could mend her shattered life. She constantly suffers from physical and mental anguish, blaming herself despite knowing it was an accident. She torments herself with endless “what ifs.” What if she hadn’t gone out? What if she had taken a different route? What if she had seen what was coming?
These ‘what if’ scenarios haunt her relentlessly. As if that isn’t enough, she shared that some friends and family members also blame her for her daughter’s loss. However, it is her self-blame that haunts her the most. At one point, she exclaims, “God is punishing me.” Others try to intervene, attempting to convince her that God is a loving being.
No, He isn’t.
I was raised on Old Testament stories where God is portrayed as a punishing deity, one who smites the wicked and punishes the sinful. That is what I was taught in Sunday school and at home.
So when my best friend was killed in a head-on collision just months before his 21st birthday, I felt guilt-ridden. I believed that God was punishing me for my sins. You see, I was supposed to accompany my friend on the journey to college that January morning. He hoped that a visit from me would convince me to join him on his media course. I was supposed to be at his house by 7:30 am. However, I woke up late, hastily got dressed, and rushed out the door. I sprinted half a mile to reach the bus stop, but I missed the bus and had to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. When I finally arrived near his house, I ran. It was bitterly cold. As I turned the corner onto his street, I was surprised to see him still waiting for me. My friend was always punctual, yet he had waited for me.
Regrettably, I didn’t return the favour.
For some inexplicable reason, I stopped less than 100 feet away. I could have called out to him, and he would have heard me. But instead, I froze in my tracks and watched him drive away. I have no idea why I didn’t shout for him to stop. Why did I make such an effort to get there only to let my friend depart without me? When I returned home, I later discovered that he had been killed. He had attempted to pass a car, hit a patch of black ice, and collided with an oncoming vehicle. He was thrown from the car and died instantly. Ironically, his father, a motorcycle traffic cop, was the first officer to arrive at the scene, unaware that the lifeless body lying at the roadside was his only son.
I blamed myself for my friend’s death. I confessed my feelings of guilt to his parents. If only I had called out, I could have delayed his departure and altered the events of that day. Then again, perhaps not. Maybe we would both have perished. I was always the cautious one. I would have insisted that my friend wear his seatbelt and advised him to slow down and not overtake the car in front of him.
What if… ? What if…? What if . . .?
My friend’s parents absolved me of any blame, but that didn’t change how I felt. I was burdened by guilt. I believed that the pain I experienced was God’s punishment for not calling out, for all the sins I had committed in my 20 years of life — lying to my parents, engaging in self-gratification, having impure thoughts about girls, being greedy. I saw myself as wicked, someone who had contributed to my best friend’s death. I understood why that woman felt the way she did.
However, we were both mistaken.
I no longer believe in a God as a heavenly Parent. I do not envision God as a human-like figure with control over life and death. I don’t believe that we are inherently sinful from birth.
It took me a long time to come to terms with what occurred on that cold January morning. But I no longer believe that I was being punished. Accidents happen; they are a mystery. I cannot explain why that woman’s daughter was taken away, just as I cannot explain the death of my friend or why I didn’t call out to him. Perhaps there exists an alternate universe where I did call out, or where the woman’s daughter is still alive. I simply don’t know.
What I do know now is that I don’t believe in the God I was taught to believe in. Instead, I believe in the mystery. I believe in the enigmatic energy that brought forth this Universe and the laws that govern it. I experience that mystery through my connection with Creation. Ironically, I had already experienced this mystery as a child. Growing up in the countryside, I found solace and safety in the fields and forests, escaping the often chaotic life at home. There, I felt a kinship with nature, whether I was hiding from my parents under the drooping skirt of an old apple tree or perched high above the ground in the branches of a pine tree. Trees provided me with protection and comfort without any complex rules. In nature, creatures lived and died. Some hunted, while others were prey. Life and death coexisted. It was in the fields and forests that I felt a profound closeness to what I would later recognize as the sacred or divine presence, something greater than myself.
I vividly recall one day, while walking home through the fields from school, I paused to watch a flock of birds soaring through the sky. Suddenly, they turned and flew toward me, passing so close to my head that I could hear the whirr of their wings. At that moment, I believed that sound was the mystery speaking directly to me. It was the recollection of that moment that convinced me that no one would come between me and the mystery in any attempt to explain it. No rules. No sin. No punishment.
I didn’t try to impose my beliefs on that woman. However, I expressed my empathy for her. I understood her self-blame and the concept of a punishing God, and I acknowledged the challenges she currently faces in life. I don’t know how her situation will unfold, but I do know that life will never be the same. It never is. That is the mystery. Nature embraces it. I am willing to embrace it, and I hope and pray that one day, she can too.
Michael Williams is a writer, storyteller, and End-of-Life Planning Facilitator. “I value deep conversations about often difficult subjects like death and dying. I don’t have the answers. Life is a mystery. I do, however, value the stories we create to help us live with the mystery.” Michael is a regular contributor to Medium. He was once the Senior Tutor of English at the University of Edinburgh and Principal Teacher of English at the Edinburgh Rudolf Steiner School and, later, the Drumduan School in Forres, Scotland. A former resident of the Findhorn Community, Michael has a strong interest in eco-spirituality and eclectic tastes in music and art. It’s rumoured that he once was a singer and guitar player with the enigmatic Scottish band ‘The Kings of Cheeze’.