God and Lady Grantham

Last night I was hanging out and channel surfing and ended up falling into an episode of Downton Abbey that I had (of course!) already seen.  That show is impossible to resist!

I tuned in toward the end of the episode, just after one of the characters had suffered a particularly cruel and wrenching kind of heartbreak.  The character runs upstairs to her room and throws herself on her bed in the most acute emotional pain.  Her mother and her sisters run up the stairs after her to try and find a way to comfort her, but when they arrive in her room, they realize there's not a thing to be done.

"Is there anything I can say to make it better?" her mother asks with the kind of desperation only present when someone we love is in pain.

I replied to the fictional character from my couch, "Of course there's not."

And so the mother simply crawls onto the bed with her daughter and holds her.

I wish the scene had stopped there, but after a moment or two, the mother begins to tell her daughter that God is testing her in order to make stronger.  Oh how I detest this kind of theology!

I wish the scene had stopped with the mother simply holding her daughter because I think it's a wonderful example of the way in which God loves us.  It's like Nouwen says - "The mystery of God's love is not that he takes our pains away, but that he first wants to share them with us."  I think God is like a mother desperate to soothe a child's pain, but knowing that the child requires independence.  It doesn't mean we're left alone with our struggles...far from it...but it means that we are given the space to work through our challenges knowing that there is a loving presence close by.

Here's to hoping Lady Edith figures that out!