Music has been an important part of my healing.
Not always, or even often, because it makes me feel better.
Rather, like poetry, music distills deep emotions into few words that resonate in my soul.
This isn’t a new song and I have heard it many times. But just the other day someone posted it in a group where we were praying desperately for a baby with profound health issues. Barring a touch from the Father’s hand, there was little hope.
The precious little warrior went home to rest, healed and whole, in the arms of Jesus.
So I listened again. And I realized how unbearably true the lyrics are.
Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling
Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It’s unfair
Natalie Grant, This is What it Means to be Held
Appalling, unfair, why did this happen?
Oh, how those questions still rattle around in my heart and mind on some days. When Dominic first left for Heaven they were my constant companion.
“Who told us we’d be rescued?”
Who indeed.
Certainly not Jesus.
He said we’d have trouble in this world. He never sugar coated how hard life could be.
But He left us with the promise that He would be with us no matter what. We would never be alone in the flood or the fire or the deep, deep pit of child loss.
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held
Natalie Grant
Child loss shattered everything-my heart, my world and my understanding of how God works in it. The sacred was most certainly “torn from my life”.
My struggle with the God I thought I knew was as painful as the devastation of burying my son.
This hand is bitterness
Natalie Grant
We want to taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow
The wise hands opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow
It’s so tempting to swallow bitterness when unending despair seems like the only alternative.
But it doesn’t numb the sorrow. Bitterness turns a heart so hard it can’t feel anything-not even love.
The wise hand does open slowly-oh, so slowly-to the beauty and promise of tomorrow.
This is what it means to be held
Natalie Grant
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held
When we received the news that Dominic left us that early, still-dark morning, I looked over to a sculpture of upturned hands on my living room table and said, “I can’t open my hands to receive blessings if I don’t also leave them open for the bruisings.”
It’s true.
God is holding me still. He is blessing me still.
I will, undoubtedly, be bruised again in some way.
I know His faithful love will see me through.
