She supposed it was time to do something she hadn’t done for a long time.
She recalled the summer between her fifth and sixth years of elementary school, the summer her dad had broken his pelvis when he mis-stepped on a 40-foot ladder while trimming a backyard tree, falling nearly 20 feet to the ground. It was that summer, she had stayed with her grandparents in rural Indiana.
Every Sunday they had driven her to a country church which stood on the top of a round hill overlooking a shimmering lake. It was in that church she had first heard the story of a man named Jesus. He died, they had said, not because he did anything wrong but because he was overflowing with love. He had died so others could live.
Now in this present darkness, she tried to remember any of the prayers she had heard in that small country church. But her mind could not recall one. There had been a small book of prayers tucked in a rack on the back of each church pew. Those prayers had been written in beautiful, rhythmic patterns, but as hard as she tried, she could not recall any of the words.
Ah! …there was one prayer she remembered. But this prayer hadn’t been typed into the little book. It was a prayer she had never heard anyone else pray, so she hoped she wouldn’t offend the Almighty. It was a prayer the country preacher had said Jesus prayed during the final moments of his life.
She wasn’t sure she correctly remembered all the words, but she tried her best, opening to the emotions she gripped in her soul. Gathering up all her pain and sorrow, all her anger and despair, she released it all in a silent, guttural scream.
“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken us!?”