We live in an angry society.
Social media is full of rants about this and that. Television blares raised voices shouting over one another in what passes for news coverage. T-shirts are emblazoned with one-liners intended to provoke others.
We tolerate and even embrace anger as a legitimate emotion.
Yet we rarely make room for mourning. We hide our tears. We shame those who don’t hide theirs as “weak” and “soft” and “cowardly” or worse.
Read the rest here: Anger or Sadness? Or Both?
I have learned a lot in these four years since Dominic ran ahead ahead to heaven.
But what a price to pay for wisdom!
It’s certainly not one I’d have agreed to up front.
Yet, here I am, older and oh, so much wiser, than I would have been if I had not buried a child.
Sometimes I resent that I wasn’t given the choice. I would trade any wisdom, no matter how beautiful and valuable for the life of my son.
No contest.
But since I cannot have him back, I’m trying hard to pay attention to the lessons grief is teaching me. I try to embrace the insights sorrow is showing my heart. I will not treat lightly any wisdom I may find in this Valley. I won’t dishonor my son’s life by making little of the things his death has revealed to me.
And I will not stay silent.
I will shout from the rooftops, from the hillsides, from any bit of altitude I can gain that the most important thing in life is love.
Love of God.
Love of people.
Nothing else really matters.
Everything else can be bought and sold.
But love cannot be traded for money-it is priceless, eternal and immortal.
Our bodies don’t last forever, but love does.
Our hopes may be dashed, but love lives.
Our breath may be exhausted, but love never runs out.
❤
I thought I had at least a passing understanding of what grief is, what it feels like, how it impacts a heart before my son died.
But I was wrong.
Until you live with it day in and day out for weeks, months, years you really just. don’t. know.
There are so many feelings wrapped up in what we call grief. So many surprises along this path.
Who knew that the same heart that would do nearly ANYTHING to spare another parent the awful burden of child loss could also be wildly jealous of that same parent’s intact family?
I confess, mine has been.
I have scrolled through social media posts about fun family vacations, beautiful weddings, newborn grandchildren, happy graduations, first jobs, Christmas photos, and family reunions where the number of people present fill the frame to the edges of the picture and been angry instead of happy for them.
It takes every ounce of self-control not to covet what I will never have.
Jealousy is a green-eyed monster and I want no part of it.
But I have to fight to keep it at bay.
I have to recall the years I was given with all my children happy around my table. I have to remember the laughter, the shared experiences, the love and fun.
I have to focus on the gift and not the loss.
Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can’t.
It’s getting a little easier now to “rejoice with those who rejoice” and not also feel jealousy lurking in the shadows.
I pray one day I won’t feel that green-eyed monster breathing down my neck at all.
I don’t cry nearly as much as I used to.
That kind of bothers me.
I don’t know if I’m just not as sad or if I’ve just used up most of my tears.
I think it’s a bit of both.
I DO still cry. And I try hard to remember that I do not need to be ashamed of my tears. I don’t need to apologize for them-even if they make some folks uncomfortable.
Because, gee whiz(!), if YOU are uncomfortable watching me cry, how uncomfortable do you think I am that I risk crying in public?
Weeping is NOT something which Christians are not supposed to do or to feel. Hot tears sliding down our cheeks, salty in the corner of our lips, is not a wrong thing to feel as part of our experience of life. It is only when the final enemy is destroyed and the last victory is won that all tears are to be wiped away. Until then we are meant to weep with those who weep, as well as to rejoice with those who rejoice … It is God who will wipe away all tears.
~Edith Schaeffer, Affliction
Sometimes I wish I could cry more. I wish I could still get the release that sobs secured early on in this journey.
Now the aching sorrow seeps deep into my bones and settles in the marrow only to be freed when my body joins Dominic’s in the ground.
The truth is, I still hurt.
The tears are always near the surface but I can’t always let them flow.
I need to cry.
I need to bear witness to this ongoing grief and give vent to the deep pain that my heart carries every. single. day.
I find it remarkable that even though Jesus himself mourned with tears, many within the Christian community set their jaw in opposition to this practice of ‘godly mourning and weeping.’ In our culture, we seem to have lost the significant practice of mourning and weeping. This lack has taken a toll on us physically, emotionally, and spiritually … Waiting and weeping go hand-in-hand.
~Jan Frank, A Graceful Waiting
I’m waiting for the day my tears will be redeemed. Waiting for the restoration of what the enemy has stolen. Waiting for faith to become sight.
Trusting.
Holding on.
Offering my tears as testimony to both my sorrow and my hope.
God not only knows your tears, but He records them and retains them? Why? So that one day He may transform them into gems of joy and glory. No tears are ever wasted when you follow Him.
~Warren Wiersbe, With the Word
I only recently came across this quote by Mark Twain.
It’s from a letter he wrote to a close friend after his favorite daughter, Susy, aged 24, died of meningitis while her parents were abroad.
It is heartbreaking and utterly perfect.
You have seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail-and the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift-derelicts; battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it is gone. And there is nothing in its place.
The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high-to come to this!
I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go away; I did not now that she could go away, and take our lives with her, yet leave our dull bodies behind.
And I did not know what she was. To me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary; and now that I would do it, it is to late; they tell me it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper.
How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?mark
He and his wife never returned to the home where she died.
I take great consolation in the fact that C.S. Lewis, a man who defended the Christian faith in an age of faithless reason was just as stricken by grief as I am.
All the research, all the thinking, all the gathering of truth he had hoarded in his heart for decades was no defense against unbearable loss and sorrow banging down the door.
He clung to Christ. So do I.
But he refused to deny his feelings. I will not deny mine.
Sorrow is no longer ALL I feel. And I am very thankful for that.
But this road still stretches before me, bends and twists and rises and falls.
It is, as Lewis says, “a process” and it will last a lifetime.
I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process … There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape … Not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago.
~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
In some liturgical Christian traditions, today is the day the church remembers and honors Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with expensive and rare perfume.
It was a beautiful act of great sacrifice as the perfume would ordinarily be a family treasure broken and used only at death for anointing a beloved body.
It’s also an expression of deep sorrow because somehow Mary knew.
Mary. Knew.
So she poured out her precious gift on the One Who loves her most.
Tears are my sacrifice.
I am pouring them at the feet of Jesus, trusting He will receive them and bless them as He did those of Mary even if others don’t understand.
Christians sometimes have a funny idea about sorrow being unspiritual. We often expect grieving hearts to heal quickly without allowing for the many stages of the grief process. Pam writes, ‘Our Savior was ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53:3). I wonder if He came to one of our churches now like that, if someone wouldn’t try and cheer Him up and tell Him to ‘let it go and open himself to the joy of the Lord,’ then give him a book and tape series to that effect?’ “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His mercy is great, but do not let me fall into the hands of men.” 2 Samuel 24:14
~ Jennifer Saake, Hannah’s Hope
Would I have chosen this broken path?
Absolutely not.
Will I embrace it as something God can use to make me more like Jesus?
I hope so-I’m certainly trying.
We are told our tears are so very precious to God that He keeps track of them in a bottle. I often wonder if when we get to Heaven, or when God remakes the earth into its beautiful and perfect form, the bottles will be opened and every tear counted and redeemed.
I do know that God has made many precious promises to those who love Him and suffer sorrow in this life.
Psalm 84 has always been a favorite and since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven it is doubly so. Verse six speaks hope to my heart:
“Passing through the Valley of Weeping (Baca), they make it a place of springs; The early rain also covers it with blessings.” AMP
This version is beautiful:
And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel;
They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,
discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!
God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and
at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!~ Psalm 84:5-7 MSG
No matter how difficult the passage, God promises to be with me on the journey and to bless my endurance with His very Self.
It’s hard to receive sorrow as a gift and even harder to lift it as a sacrifice of praise.
But when I do, I find God meets me there.
The pain doesn’t disappear, but He gives me strength to bear up under it.
And this great sorrow that weighs on my heart also opens my eyes. I am not the only one weeping.
Look at Jesus. He is always weeping, a man of sorrows. Do you know why? Because He is perfect. When you are not absorbed in yourself, you can feel the sadness of the world. ~Tim Keller
