Dare to Hope

I've been wrestling.  My son died 6 weeks ago.  Days have already turned into weeks.  Soon, weeks will turn into months, and months will turn into years.  So many people ask me, "How are you?"  I understand that the question is more like saying 'hello' to most.  It is simply a greeting.  It's just that this question forces me to confront my reality.  The answers I have rehearsed for years upon years don't suit me anymore.  My honest answers are too raw, too painful to expose in a simple greeting.  I see the kindness in the eyes of many who ask and I don't assume the worst.  Instead, I worry.  I worry that people may want my 'tour of grief' to end before it will.  I am not even certain that I have entirely accepted that my boy isn't coming home to me.  I mean, all of his clothes are folded and placed in his dresser and they don't appear in the laundry basket covered in spaghetti sauce, dirt, or peanut butter anymore.  Man, he loved peanut butter.  He mumbled the consonants of those words just perfectly right and gave an internal anxious giggle when I delivered the goods, but I digress.  I still find myself looking for him, expecting his little body to kerplunk in my lap.  I know the truth, but have I even accepted it?  I suppose the point I'm getting at is that grief is full of discomfort and mystery.  It is unsettling and unmanageable.  It can't be categorized or manipulated to fit into a task list.  It just is.  Our society is really not okay with grief, and maybe I'm not either.  I can't reason my way through it, or make an action plan for tackling grief.  So, instead I've been wrestling with my simple responses to the mundane question, 'how are you?' as some sort of beginning to the long road ahead.

How do I tell someone that my heart is shattered?  How do I explain the frustration I feel that I can't escape the weight of sorrow?  Do I need to walk into that kind of vulnerability in every simple conversation?  If I'm honest, I just can't.  I feel broken.  I am broken, but I want to reserve the right to enter into that vulnerability on my own terms.  So, sometimes a short answer is all I have.  I will say that I am more functional now than I was before, but somehow I feel more sad than I did before.  I hadn't dreamed that was possible.  Maybe it is simply that the shock is beginning to wear off or that I am beginning to accept the reality that all of my dreams are gone.  I don't really know.  I just wrestle.  I have so many questions.  How long should a mother grieve for the loss of her child?  I suppose my answer right now is, "Until glory."  I am thankful that I can prepare meals without nearly burning the house down, but the ache in my heart is difficult to place words around.  Everything that I do is executed with an ache so deep. 

I find it so fascinating that Tahlequah, the orca who carried her dead calf for at least 17 days, did so in the midst of my grieving.  She just kept diving down to retrieve her dead baby.  I can relate.  I am certain that if she could have willed that calf to live, it would have.  It is a powerful and tragic love story to see a mother orca grieve the loss of her baby.  I have been captivated by it myself.  I know I am not alone.  This story has been followed by people around the globe.  Now, my guess is that people are predominantly relieved that she finally let her baby go, releasing that baby into the abyss of the ocean.  If I'm honest, I felt a little relieved myself.  "Oh, finally!  She is going to move on," I thought.  Then, it hit me.  That troubles me, and for obvious reasons.  It speaks volumes of my own difficulty in grappling with grief.  Here I am in the midst of it, and I am already wrestling with how unsettled I feel.  I am not sure if I am seeking acceptance, peace, or what but this whole thing brought me to some thinking, praying, and introspection. 

Will I trust God in the waiting?  Will I trust Him to lift my weary head, to set my eyes on Him?  How will I even make it through this?  The images that still live in my mind bring relentless waves of grief.  Will I trust God with my tears and sorrow?  Do I believe that He can give me new dreams without my Haddy in them?  Right now that feels so impossible.  Everything feels so wrong.  I want to prepare five plates at meal time and two cups of milk before bed.  I want to rock my boy so badly that my chest aches.  All of the impossible things that I can't have this side of heaven leave me restless, anxious and wrestling.  I am asking God to help me and longing for some relief.  I know I have real choices to make in this grief, and I intend to seek Christ in every step, but I am feeling weary of the prospect of a future with the depth of grief I am currently experiencing.  I am weary of the question that reminds me that I cannot return to my former self.  However, I know that God just isn't finished with me yet.  

My Jason has tenderly nudged me in all of this wrestling.  He has been reading and rereading this beautiful article from John Piper.  https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/talking-to-your-tears  Please give it a read.  It is so good for the soul.  To listen to my husband read it to me through tears is a deep and profound offering of grace and love from God.  Jason's willingness to sow his tears for the glory of God inspires me, moves me to do the same.  Here is an excerpt that has spoken to me particularly.

"So here’s the lesson: When there are simple, straightforward jobs to be done, and you are full of sadness, and tears are flowing easily, go ahead and do the jobs with tears. Be realistic. Say to your tears: ‘Tears, I feel you. You make me want to quit life. But there is a field to be sown (dishes to be washed, car to be fixed, sermon to be written). I know you will wet my face several times today, but I have work to do and you will just have to go with me. I intend to take the bag of seeds and sow. If you come along then you will just have to wet the rows.”

Right now I am sitting in the weight of this sorrow and wrestling with the Lord in my grief.  How long Oh Lord?  I cry out and merely call his name, over and over.  I feel His presence and see His goodness, yet this grief remains.  I can't fix it, lift it or bear it.  There is something that I can do though.  I can trust in the One who can.  He can bear my grief.  He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.  He understands.  He doesn't buckle at my reeling against death itself.  My reeling against death is not shaking my fist at God.  It is an awareness that we just aren't meant for death.  It just feels so wrong.  It is unnatural and wasn't at all part of the garden of Eden.  Because sin entered the world, Jesus came to die.  He came to remedy the punishment of my sin by becoming sin on my behalf.  Death is the result of sin in this world.  We ought to reel against death and I do.  There is still good news in that death was defeated by Jesus on the cross, but it doesn't remove the weight of sorrow, this very real suffering at hand.  Because of Jesus' death on the cross, those who are in Christ are promised by Him to share eternity with him.  There is real hope for those in Christ.

Romans 6:23
The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So, I am wrestling and reeling with pain.  I ache.  I am also studying, searching, and finding tender truths for my weary soul.  It is a comfort to know that death is defeated and that one sweet day we will experience the fullness of that truth.  It is a comfort to know that we don't have to accept death as a normal part of life.  I am asking God to remind me to seek Him first.  In all of this pain, I am able to worship.  I can read again.  Not quite like before, but oh the truth of the goodness of God.  It is a salve to my soul.  There is a mysterious quenching, a way by which this profound ache sometimes sees the glimmer of glory, and knows that all things will be made new.  I believe that rest will come.  I am settling in on the truths of God's Word, knowing that my restless, weary heart needs them for all of my tomorrows.  As Christians, we would be fools to think that God owes us a life of ease.  His Word tells a very different story (Matthew 5:45).  However, His Word reminds us that He is near.  He will provide.  He will renew and restore us.  He is faithful to fulfill all of His promises.  So, for now I will sow these tears in my waking and sleeping.  To the grocery store, the gas station, and to the kitchen, these tears will go with me.  I am going to dare to hope, with this restless heart of mine, that God Himself will reap a harvest.