Cliches

I hate cliches.

"God is good all the time. All the time, God is good."
"When God closes a door, he opens a window."
"Don't worry, God's got something better for you."
"It's all right, he (or she) is in a better place now."
"At least he (or she) isn't suffering anymore."
"God is going to turn this for good."
"It's a God thing."
"God's going to show up."

Oh, and "God will never give you more than you can handle."

The list could go on. You get the point. I hate cliches.

But why? Why do I hate them so? Why, especially, considering that some of them are rock-solid scriptural truths?  Sure, it's debatable that if God closes a door he opens a window. I'm not sure that Sound of Music is a terribly reliable source of sound theology. And it's an outright lie that God never gives us more than we can handle. He does so all the time; that's why we need him. But let's face it; many of the cliches we Christians love to throw out are straight from Scripture. They're true. After all, God is good all the time. He will turn all things in my life for good. All of life is a God thing, and he doesn't just show up, he is always there. So why do they grate so?

I think partly it is because cliches lack nuance. You aren't willing to wrestle with me the nuances of a life where what is better is not always nicer or more comfortable, where God is always there but sometimes feels hidden, where what I want is not always what I get, and I am called to trust most when my eyes see the least. When I ask God for ice cream, and he gives me Brussels sprouts, I get that he's giving me something better. Brussels sprouts have more nutrition. They are cruciferous (loosely translated to mean, packed full of good things, but tasting kinda bad). Brussels sprouts will make me healthy and strong. Ice cream will just make me fat. I get it. God is giving me something "better". But the fact is, I don't want Brussels sprouts. They taste bad. They smell bad when they're cooking. I have to choke them down, one painful green ball at a time. Ice cream would slip down so smoothly. But when you slam me with the cliche, you fail to acknowledge all that nuance. You say, "God's got something better for you," and I hear, "You asked God for ice cream, and he's going to give you cheesecake instead. Or an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top." And I am left to choke down the Brussels sprouts alone.

But I mostly hate cliches because they lack empathy and compassion. It's not the words themselves that sting so fiercely, but the timing and the manner in which they are spoken. They may well be truth, but they are truth that I am not ready to hear in this moment that my heart is broken. You have not taken the time to hear my heart. You have not sat in silence with me in the pain. You have not cried with me. You just spout to me a cliche that feels like a slap across the cheek to snap me out of what you think is hysteria. What you say is, "God is going to turn this for good," but because you have not taken any time to hear me cry, what I hear is, "Your tears are not legitimate. You shouldn't feel that way." Closer to the truth, I think you are saying, "Your tears make me uncomfortable, so I'm going to say something to make you stop crying so I don't have to feel so awkward." You cannot stand to face my pain with me, so you give me cold comfort and walk away, and I am left to cry my tears alone.

That's mostly, I think, why I hate cliches.

I will never forget one of the worst days of my life. I ended up talking with someone with whom I had no intention to do so. I had been so beaten up with cliches that I had learned that it was best to keep my mouth shut and walk alone. But that day, for some reason which remains elusive still, I talked. For the first time in my life, I experienced something different. He listened. He cared. He had tears in his eyes. He sat in the darkness with me. He sat there in the misery and did not try to change it. And then he said, "Marianne, I don't know what to say. I don't have any words to make you feel better. I don't know why things like this happen. But what I do know is this: somehow, in some way, in ways we don't understand, God is still good, and all that comes from his hand is goodness."

And it wasn't a cliche.  It wasn't a cliche because he had sat in the pain with me. It was stated after the silence, after the tears, after the acknowledgement that the circumstances were terrible and heart-shattering and worthy of lament. What he gave me that day was a rock-solid truth I could anchor my life on. It helped me see that, as dark as my life looked, there was still light and goodness that I could count on. There was nuance, and empathy, and care, and because of that, what might have been just another cliche became a hope to which I have clung with white knuckles through dark, dark days and nights.

I hate cliches. I hate them, not because they are not true (because many of them are) but because they are a brush-off so you don't have to deal with my messiness and hurt. I know the truth. I know the answers. I even know that I'm messy and mixed-up and miserable. What I need is someone who is willing to walk through the mire and messiness with  me.

And when you do that, your words stop being cliche and become for me life. And truth.