Jennifer Gross

After five years of infertility, I was finally pregnant. Six weeks later, I had a miscarriage. It was devastating. Why had God let me down this way? I had unknowingly fallen into thinking that if I was a “good Christian,” God would give me what I wanted. And when it didn’t happen, I sank into grief and bitterness. Holding on to faith seemed more painful than letting it go.

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

My church friend Liza^* and her husband moved into a retirement community over the summer. One of the biggest challenges, of course, has been downsizing. But it has also been difficult to leave their longtime neighbors. One neighbor now lives alone and uses a walker. She does everything she can to remain independent and stay in her home as she ages. Sometimes, though, she needs help, and that’s when she calls Liza.

When I was a teenager and knew it all, I got bored with Sunday mornings. I already knew that Jesus died for our sins and rose on the third day. Why did we need to keep talking about it? In some ways, I believed in Jesus and the cross like I believed in George Washington crossing the Delaware River: both were real events that shaped history but had little impact on my day-to-day life.

My teenage daughter and her friend were giggling and joking in the back of my car. Her friend said, “Ms. Gross, am I the weirdest friend that your daughter has?”

My preschool-aged daughter sat on the ground, wailing. We had been at the playground for hours, but now it was time to go. Her little friends had left with no drama other than some whining, but my kid’s piercing shrieks drew appalled stares from other parents and their better-behaved children.

I’ve attended what seems like a lot of funerals over the past few years at my church. More and more of the names in funeral announcements are familiar, particularly as the generation ahead of me—those who welcomed us into the church community more than a dozen years ago—has aged.

Every Sunday in church, a wonderful man in my parish ushers. He hands out bulletins, directs people for Communion, and holds the offering plate. He carries the cross in during the procession that begins the service and out at the end of the service. We’ll call him W.

My husband’s family gathered at our house one summer for a Fourth of July cookout. When it got dark, we went outside for sparklers and fireworks in the driveway. As we lit some sparklers for the kids, my father-in-law’s phone beeped and he said, “I have a phone call. Go ahead—I’ll be right back.”

When I taught an English as a Second Language class at my church, I often ran into a challenge. A student would ask me what a particular word meant, and even though I knew the word, I struggled to describe its meaning without using the same word. The word itself embodied the meaning for me; I could feel and know the meaning but could not put it into different words. It was just … itself. (Luckily for my students, online dictionaries came to my rescue!)