Finally freed of my academic obligations, I was at complete liberty to brood without guilt. There was room at last for my mind to breathe yet I only found myself perturbed and afraid of the conclusions it might reach if it did.

I still don't know if it was coincidence that my new iPod was out of batteries, that those old sermon tapes were still sitting on the dashboard of my car, that the 4 hour drive down to Virginia had me bored of John Mayer before I could even leave the state. All I know is that something compelled me to dust off a cassette my parents had left in the car years ago and listen in surreal surprise as the piercing voice of my old pastor came through the speakers to say:

Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the desert,
where your fathers tested and tried me
and for forty years saw what I did.

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first...

I was immediately transported to the moment I first heard that message. I remember sitting on the right side of the sanctuary, close to the front, where I could nearly see the tears as they ran down his face. I was gripped by the same tightness in my gut as he described how one of his youth group kids was killed in a tragic car accident the night before. I remembered it all so clearly, and it reminded me that all the events that shook my faith so severely began with the announcement that this pastor, this man I had come to love and trust so much, was leaving our church. I remembered how much I missed his voice and the messages it carried.

The stereo crackled as the car trundled over the massive bridge spanning the Delaware Water Gap. I could see the sun setting just ahead of me, obscured just enough by distant cloudy wisps to bathe the horizon in gold and orange hues. It was serene and tense, a Sunday afternoon-like moment that captured the pang and pleasure of time split in between other moments of significance. The scene captured the ambiguous sentiments I had towards myself: a body in motion, transient and uncertain, hovering yet moving towards a destination of intangible and overwhelming meaning. Unspeaking and immaterial, indifferent and all-encompassing, eternal and momentary, stood this magnificent sunset to remind me of... what?

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts...

I listened to him speak. I knew what he would say, knew what my response would be even before it happened. I could feel the hardness of my own heart, its cold resistance constantly accusing and justifying and lashing out in anger and hurt at this god, this so-called god, this cruel and petty god, this weak and foolish god...

...if we hold till the end the confidence we had at first.

And I knew that I wanted him back. More than anything in my life, I wanted God back. I wanted to be free from the self-pity, the nagging insecurities, the constant doubts and questions and philosophical excuses to refuse belief. I wanted to be naive, to trust and have faith, to believe in something anything one thing I could say I knew was true.

He talked about how Jesus stopped and drew near to poor and blind Bartimaeus to ask him, "What do you want me to do for you?", how God was stopping even now to ask the same question to us. And my heart leapt and yearned within me and screamed, "I want you! I want to be happy again! I want to know you want me too! I want to believe! I want I want I want I want..." and all the suppressed anguish and sorrow and longing over the past year spilled out and the tears blurred the sky until it streaked blood-red in my eyes and died in the west and I cried and sobbed and heaved and retched until I realized the last time I did this was when I truly realized that Sonia was dead and would never come back and that it was all so messed up and awful and god why god why god why god why?