In the summer hills behind my maternal grandparents’ home in Southern California, the earth pleads for water like lips, cracked and gaping. Yet the same baked land is home to orange trees from which my grandpa would prepare fresh-squeezed orange juice during our annual family visits. There was nothing more heavenly—like sun-kissed honey ambrosia.
Once my husband and I brought our own children for a visit. On a walk to the eucalyptus tree (or “euca-lipstick” tree, as my young cousin called it), we discovered a brutal scene.
A venomous tarantula hawk wasp, its translucent rust-colored wings held erect by gangly appendages, was dragging its prey along the dirt—an immobilized, hairy tarantula that jerked over the uneven ground like a rubber toy.
Second only to the bullet ant, the stings of these monstrous wasps are ranked most painful in the vast insect world—described by one researcher as “immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline,” the researcher continued, “simply does not work in these situations.”
But the wasp’s prey of choice, the tarantula, has an even more horrifying fate than these poor souls. The female wasp wrestles with its victim, grasping it with long, hooked claws and stinging it between the legs. The tarantula is paralyzed and is then dragged by the wasp to a house of horrors—a lair in which the wasp lays a single egg on the still-living tarantula’s abdomen. After hatching, the larva digs its way down into the tarantula, feeding insatiably upon it, while bypassing vital organs in order to keep its feast alive as long as possible.
On that day, I was still unaware of the notorious sting, so I unwittingly scooped the creatures up—attached predator and all—in a torn plastic water bottle and froze them next to my grandma’s Eggo waffles. Once home in Utah, my son preserved them as part of his eighth-grade biology insect collection. Last I heard, both the insect predator and the arachnid prey were displayed on his biology teacher’s Wall of Fame.
And the cycle of life continues.
It’s relatively easy to find grace and God in some places—fresh-squeezed orange juice, mountain streams, songbirds, coral reefs, laughter, double rainbows, and tangerine sunsets. My childhood crayon drawings are proof enough for me.
But where is God in the gruesome, ugly tarantula hawk wasp burrows? Where is grace in the painful, distressing, soul-wrenching dark nights?
My evolution professor once related Charles Darwin’s dark night of the soul and his transition from a Christian to an agnostic. It did not come, as many assume, solely embedded in his theory of evolution by natural selection—his competitive, dog-eat-dog world where only the fittest species survive.
Rather, some believe, it began with the death of his beloved ten-year-old daughter, Annie. Darwin wrote that his daughter had been “the joy of the Household, and the solace of our old age.” Just a week after her tragic death, following months of mysterious illness, Darwin wrote of his Annie, “She must have known how we loved her; oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face.”
Darwin was too grief-stricken to even attend the funeral.
It’s the age-old problem of theodicy. How can we reconcile God’s providence in the face of evil and pain? Philosophers and theologians have wrestled with this question for centuries, while everyday seekers live out this wrestle time and again.
My own dark night of the soul has frequently reared its ugly head in the form of chronic illness. It began just shy of twenty years ago, when I awoke at night to use the bathroom and discovered it hurt to walk. It was as if someone had been hammering the tops of my feet in the night while I slept—some deranged little elf on a sadistic mission.
In the morning and as the day progressed, the pain would dissipate. But at night, the phantom would return for his nightly poundings. It was bizarre, because I couldn’t trace the pain to an injury and because it didn’t follow the predictable pattern of pain (more intense, then less, then gone). Rather, it would come and go, sometimes reappearing in a different location, sometimes increasing rather than decreasing in intensity. It was haphazard and unsettling.
Since the diagnostic protocol looked not just at lab tests or imaging but at a full clinical picture over time, it took several years to receive the eventual diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that frequently affects joints. In autoimmune disease, the immune system is in overdrive. It detects pollen—attack! Peanuts—attack! Any number of other benign triggers—attack! It may even be bored due to our hypersanitized world—attack! Like other autoimmune diseases, RA warps the immune system into a trigger-happy mania that causes collateral damage as it fights against nonexistent enemies. Detonating its arsenal against vague shadows on the wall, it leaves a broken battleground in its wake—my body. And there is no cure.
In addition to my feet, other joints became affected in the initial years—fingers, wrists, knees, and shoulders. I remember those cursed little onesie snaps during my son’s nighttime diaper changes—how absurdly painful it was to pinch those snaps closed. Or lifting my arms slowly above my head to put on a shirt, wincing as my shoulders burned. Or doorknobs—those brilliant little inventions that keep young toddlers out of forbidden areas, but which at times required one hand bracing the other to ease the twisting in my throbbing wrist.
In addition to pain, there is frequently a dragging fatigue associated with autoimmune illness—as if you have ankle and arm weights as you walk through a sea of Jell-O wherever you go. Simple tasks take longer. They’re harder. It feels like the day after you’ve had the flu, when you’re achy and beat, but every day is Groundhog Day, and that day never ends.
Of course, the whole disease ebbs and flows, and some months or years are better than others. In my case, it has warped into a distinct but related autoimmune disease called scleroderma. Whereas rheumatoid arthritis frequently attacks joints, scleroderma targets the skin. The name scleroderma means “thick skin,” which describes the thickened skin that affects many sufferers. But like rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma causes pain and fatigue. It can also attack inner organs, becoming life-threatening if it decides to battle it out with organs such as the heart or lungs. It’s a confusing disease both because of its varied manifestations and its uncertain course.
Lately, it’s my muscles that cause me the most pain. I don’t know if it’s due to a different disease altogether, a side effect from medication, or an unusual manifestation of my growing list of diagnoses. It seems like a paradoxical response to pain, but many days there is nothing I would like more than that little maniacal elf to come back with his hammer and pound my muscles into oblivion. Wrestling with chronic disease often means wrestling with a language problem. I can’t go to my doctor and say it hurts here, and then point to my whole body. I can’t say, please doc, just send me to someone who will squeeze the deep aching from my arms and legs like toothpaste. Please just fix me.
Sometimes, in my dark nights, I pray God would swoop down and take me for a heavenly field trip—not a permanent one, mind you, but just a brief breather. Just for one day.
It’s tempting to wallow in an immature self-pity—turning into myself, becoming caged with only my own suffering. But this is not who I want to be. Another inclination is to downplay my own suffering because many have it so much worse: horrific abuse, loneliness, betrayal, slavery, gnawing hunger, and violent war. Yet I also know this isn’t a suffering Olympics. There are no medals for the most-wounded winners. Comparisons are counterproductive. I’m simply hoping to carry my own cross well, seeking to live a life imbued with grace.
And so, my question resurfaces. Where is God in the burrows of the gruesome, ugly tarantula hawk wasps? Where is God in chronic illness? Where is grace in the painful, distressing, soul-wrenching dark nights?
One of the unique challenges of chronic illness is its ambiguity. Most days, a person lives in a confusing no-man’s-land between health and sickness. It’s often a blurry place of not-quite-sick and not-quite-well.
I may show up to an evening event looking seemingly fine, but I’m able to be there because I have carefully and intentionally rationed my energy during the day. My cross is invisible. I almost never use a wheelchair; I don’t limp or carry a visible marker like an oxygen mask or feeding tube. But I also don’t run or even stand for long, nor do I spend long days meandering through shopping malls or amusement parks.
I’m careful—measured. Even my movements are rationed. There’s a kind of carefree recklessness even in something as benign as conversation—a gesticulation of the arms, large inflections of the voice, an unpredictable expressiveness of the face. But I’ve found that even my conversation reflects this careful conservation. I stay closer to my body. The words are rationed and the movements smaller, slower, and more intentional.
The therapist and multiple-sclerosis sufferer Robert Shuman observed of his progressing illness that “once-simple choices about trips to the city or walks downtown become intensive, hypervigilant, body-scanning, problem-solving matters.” I can relate. Is there a place to sit down? Can I politely excuse myself from a conversation without it being socially awkward? What is my body needing right now—have I demanded too much of it, stretched it too far? Is my body so bossy that it will prevent me from being sufficiently focused on the social task at hand? What will this cost me later today? Tomorrow?
A few years ago, I was at a low point. Daily I felt drained from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning. Even showering felt like a monumental task—so big. So heavy. One day I switched a load of laundry in the basement and then lay down on the floor because it was too much effort to walk the half flight of stairs to the family room. Sitting upright at the table for a meal was sometimes too much. There was no relief in sight, and I had no idea how I could be a mother and wife, let alone a fulfilled human being in this body that was absolutely void of vitality. I had nothing.
My sense of spiritual connection was also at an all-time low. The gospel message was “turn to Jesus. He will not forsake you.” But the invitation seemed suddenly inane, nonsensical. I felt forsaken. Utterly abandoned and forgotten by God. The chasm between what God offered and what I believed Him to be capable of offering was entirely too wide, and I found myself stranded in the gap. My arms stretched wide between two truths—the attentive God I trusted, and the absent God I experienced.
There in the dry, parched no-man’s-land was my wrestle. I was Jacob, wrestling with the messenger and crying, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Gen. 32:26). I was Sarah, abandoned between promises of a numberless posterity and the reality of an empty womb (Gen. 17:16).
And time stretched on. So much time.
In hunger, I turned anew to all the things that were supposed to help me discover Jesus. My scripture study was not orderly or methodical. I clung to the words of Isaiah, which became almost a mantra for me:
For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. (Isa. 54:7–8)
I read the promises over and over, though deep down I wondered if the words were just pretty poetry and nothing more.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. (Isa. 43:2–3)
My prayers were urgent, though they were largely without words. I stumbled along, doing what I could to care for myself and my family, but feeling very much a forsaken failure. My attentive husband literally carried me when I needed it and, along with family and friends, sat with me, cleaned our house, brought me dinner, and pointed me to hope. I listened to Christian hymns on repeat:
“When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul!”
I practiced daily for grace. Absent experiences of grace, I clung to practices out of desperation.
“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart Naught be all else to me, save that thou art Thou my best thought, by day or by night Waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light.”
One day—I can point to the exact place I stood in my bedroom, next to my Great-Grandma Esther’s hand-me-down jewelry box—I was pondering some scriptural examples of unflinching faith, including the biblical Esther, who declared, “if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). There were also Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who knew that God had the ability to deliver them from the fiery furnace, but also knew that if He didn’t, they would remain faithful (Dan. 3:17–18); and Mary, who with absolute submission said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).
And I asked myself, if I got to the point where I simply could not find the divine communion and spiritual healing I sought, what would I do? Would I give up on the Lord? Would I turn elsewhere?
Almost as I thought this, in a holy, perhaps mystical experience which I can only call gracing, I knew that I would never turn my back on the Lord. It was simultaneously a decision, a feeling, a direction, and a command. It was also a scripture and a hymn:
Even if I live my whole life and never find the peace I seek, I will not give up on the Lord. I will wait upon Him however long it takes.
On the surface, these words barely touch the significance of the experience for me; I admit they seem wholly unextraordinary. But the experience itself was fire. It was unclear what part of this lightning bolt stemmed from me and what part from God. In some ways, its intensity convinced me that it could not have emerged from my weak self, which was entirely too fickle and frail for such bold declarations. But in another sense, this conviction seemed to stem from the most authentic part of myself—the spiritual core that knew God intimately, even through veiled vision.
But also, in a strange inexplicable way, the demarcation between me and God seemed irrelevant. In communion with God, we were one and the same—indistinguishable. It was a duet, a dance, a covenant: a gift given and a gift received, a promise made and a promise trusted. It wasn’t submission; it was collaboration and union.
After the long wrestle, like Jacob, I had prevailed (Gen. 32:28). Like Sarah, I laughed (Gen. 18:12). I had been given power from God and all was new.
Isaiah had promised that the rivers would not overflow me (Isa. 43:2), and this moment felt like a gasp for air after having been held underwater for too long. It was an awareness of the feathers being lifted ever so slightly—pointing me towards the enveloping air that was present the whole time, embracing me in grace.1
Over the next few months, my physical health improved and became more manageable. Though it continues to challenge me, and I still have bad days and months, the spiritual epiphany continues to center me when I feel the waters gathering blackness. When I pass through the waters, I remember: the Lord will be with me. And when I flounder in the gap between my hope and my experience, where it’s too dark to see, I wrestle.
There’s a critique of simplistic religious thinking called “The God of the Gaps.” Miracles, so the argument goes, are no longer miracles once we recognize they were accomplished by predictable scientific means—once the unknown becomes known. Was God’s creation of the universe a miracle? No, it was the Big Bang. Are answers to prayer miraculous? No, they were coincidence, or medical intervention. That’s all.
As our scientific understanding increases, the curtain gradually parts and the mysterious gap where God exists becomes increasingly smaller. And eventually, once we learn it all, He’ll extinguish all together.
No mystery, no God.
But my experience has laid bare a different “God of the Gaps”—not one who exists in the mysterious gaps between knowns, but in the gaps between seemingly contradictory and incompatible truths: God is attentive and worthy of my trust, and God is nowhere to be found. I see this God in the paradoxes, the space where the wrestle occurs. As the thoughtful Latter-day Saint thinker Francine Bennion noted,2 opposing scripture illuminates some of these gaps:
“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom.” (Prov. 3:13)
“In much wisdom is much grief.” (Eccles. 1:18)“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Heb. 13:5)
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1)“Men are, that they might have joy.” (2 Ne. 2:25) “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7)
There are no easy answers. The ending of this chapter, in fact, sat unwritten for months. Everything is unsatisfactory. Like an open wound, the gap between the split edges pulses in pain. And though the particulars of each story differ from person to person, we all carry wounds.
In pondering the problem of theodicy, the only place I can go that makes a modicum of sense is that God promises to find us in the gap, to suffer there with us and shepherd us through the muck to make some kind of redemption possible. I haven’t found a satisfactory answer to the question of where God is in the muck of life or in the tarantula hawk wasp nests.
When I’m sitting in the dark, the promises make no sense.
But if I instead ask, “What is God doing with me in the muck?,” I might have somewhere to go. It helps me to think of God in terms of relationship rather than as a separate entity, a response rather than an existence, a verb rather than a noun. “Christ’s atonement,” writes Francine Bennion,
makes it possible for us to go through the meeting of reality, the falling, the hungering, the screaming, the crawling on the floor, the being disfigured and scarred for life psychologically or physically, and still survive and transcend it.3
For my part, chronic illness has been a significant catalyst in my search for God. I found myself stuck in the gap between daily weariness and contradictory promises that those who wait upon the Lord shall “mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:31).
There’s an unexpected “collateral beauty” in chronic illness. Psychologist Robert Shuman writes that we might “imagine illness as a text, a medium, a way. It is material with which one can work rather than simply an unwanted force to which one is subject. . . . Like the grit in the oyster, the matter of illness becomes the substance of art.”
The medium with which those who suffer with chronic illness must build our lives is not the same as that given to the energetic, hospitable Marthas of the world (Luke 10:40–42). But it’s a different specialty, a different cell, a different clay, and the result can also be beautiful in the body of Christ. It’s the articulate young woman with Down syndrome advocating for special needs rights. It’s my grandma with trembling hands, who for years sent shaky, personal birthday cards to each of her descendants. It’s my father-in-law, diagnosed with terminal cancer, who would chat with the cashier at the grocery store about the loveliness of the day.
My own illness slows me down, challenging me to pay more attention to the life that speeds by. It turns me toward wonderful books and ideas and conversations, and it invites me to cherish important relationships and not spend too much time nursing my hurts. It teaches me to be patient with others who also have some thorn in the flesh, some challenge with which they wrestle. Chronic illness teaches me about wrestling. And it reveals grace.
Granted, some days I forget all this; there’s just fog and weight. At those times I’m drowning in the muck, and the abstract ideal loses footing in the face of the particular reality.
But the same godly tumbling of time and space that brought hawk wasps also brought penguins and wild horses. In the wrestle, new life emerges from death: pain brings perspective and empathy, oranges grow from baked earth, crocuses emerge from ice-encrusted snow, and a phoenix rises from the ashes.
Wounds birth scars.
And I take a breath.
This essay is an excerpt from Gracing (Faith Matters, 2024) by Hannah Packard Crowther.
Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.
Art by J. Kirk Richards.
Because of this experience, Joseph Smith’s multiple and differing accounts of his Sacred Grove experience don’t particularly bother me. A “crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect language,” according to Joseph Smith, is inadequate for capturing some events, especially spiritual ones. Annie Dillard’s description of the struggle was more graphic: “You are a Seminole alligator wrestler. Half naked, with your two bare hands, you hold and fight a sentence’s head while its tail tries to knock you over.” In my wrestle to find words for this experience, I think I have at least four or five versions by now. I’m revising and rewriting based on new thoughts and new meanings that emerge over time. The alligator wrestle is real.
Francine Bennion, “A Latter-day Saint Theology of Suffering,” sermon given at the Brigham Young University Women’s Conference, March 28, 1986, in At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women, ed. Jennifer Reeder and Kate Holbrook (Church Historian’s Press, 2017), 215.
Bennion, “Latter-day Saint Theology of Suffering,” 230.