God, the Sufferer.

Even now, months after, I can still see the deer's body: back legs broken, side stripped of fur, of skin, crawling to get off the road. Alive.
I pulled over behind the tan Lexus and cried, stealing cowardly glances—wanting to make sure he was alright, but unwilling to imagine his full agony. The man stepped out of his car, visibly distraught, and walked over towards the buck: ashamed. He kept his back to the deer, but waited for the police to come, so it would be shot. Mercifully shot.

There was laughter when I later told people I would have killed it, if only I had a knife. It sounds severe, I know, but I would have. I know I would have—it was that appalling. And, I left the scene when the police came, unapologetically allowing myself to cry.

Suffering. Death. That's why I cried, I reasoned through with myself. They are so foreign, so "other" in the meanest sense of the word our bodies reject them with grief. I cried because there was an end to this deer, but because there is an end and death is real. It's not just death—out there, sometime later, when we're old—it's something we participate in everyday. When my sister makes a snide comment, I retaliate. Death. When I feel threatened by someone, I ignore them. Death. Down to the smiles we give, or refuse to give, everyday, we breathe life into situations, and circumstances, or throw shrapnel.

We try hard not to see these brutalities under full light. I look at newspaper headlines, shouting of lives that have been lost overseas, and I don't read long enough to feel that twinge in my stomach. The one that tells me something is utterly wrong. Because it's uncomfortable. But, how can I ever learn to hate death, injustice, starvation, if I never know their form? Twelve year old girls are used for sex, and children's bodies deteriorate from malnutrition. This is death—do we hate it?

Sometimes when I pray, I don't really have words. I try hard to find them, but sometimes I'm not sure I know. It's just an aching groan that might manifest truer as a punch to the wall, than words on a page. When I think about my friend who was sexually abused as a child. Or, my Uncle's struggling marriage. That little boy being picked on. Her manipulative boyfriend. "But, God, this. And, that," I rage. It aches. And, I don't know why it's here, or why we can't just put down the gun.

I hadn't really considered God's response to this, till more recently, when I realized He suffers worse. As Jesus wept over Jerusalem, He weeps over us, knowing all we were created to be—all we are capable of instead. "But, God—" and He answers in grief, "I know.