I love teenagers. I hate it when a teenager dies.  Walking through life alongside a teenager is like watching a tall, freshly green stem, leaves unfurling to reveal the tight bud of possibility –  forthcoming beauty and magnificence.  The death of a teenager rips that stem from the ground, and with it all the promise of a hundred tomorrows.  It is a wrenching experience for anyone in the vicinity, whether a close family member or a simple acquaintance.   Don’t get me wrong. I’m firmly in the camp that believes in God’s mercy, love, and endlessly perfect will.  But I also believe that God made us flesh, and it flat hurts to watch these things happen.

I have found, however, that events like the death of a teenager open channels of conversation that never seem to come up on a regular Tuesday.  Today, on the heels of a death that has many people I love and respect reeling,  the comment was made that I live in the black and white, while others live in the gray.

That has me thinking.  I’m not sure I agree.

The truth is, much of what others consider “gray” simply is black and white to me.  Doing the right thing…following the rules…finding and sticking with the right mindset…making good decisions…these are invariably black and white to me (whereas, I find others seem to think them gray).  Truthfully, we don’t need God in the black and white.  The Pharisees were masters of the black and white.   We can choose (or not choose) the right thing in the black and white, without any help from God.

But the gray…the gray!  The gray is finding the balance between trusting God’s promises and feeling the very real feelings in the skin and bones we live in.  (This calls to mind one of my favorite movie scenes – The Apostle – Robert Duvall frustrated with God, saying to Him, “I’ve always called you Jesus, and you’ve always called me Sonny.”  The relationship there!) The gray is saying “I don’t understand” and being simultaneous furious about it and completely okay with it.  We try to put actions and decisions in the gray area.  To me, actions are almost always black and white. The heart, however, lives in the gray.

Fortunately, so does God.  He knows that the gray is the void that draws us to Him for answers, a safe place to vent anger, a desperate plea for peace.  The gray is where God works.  The gray is where you simply try to put one foot in front of the other, and you look back and find that you did, in fact, put one foot in front of the other.

People speak of “the gray area” with a negative bent.  For me, the gray is where I find that I don’t have to have the answers, and I don’t have to try to find the right words or feelings.

The gray is where I can simply be.