Weary Bones

Joy and sorrow together can make you feel uneven, disoriented. The last few days have been full of beauty and full of pain. The juxtaposition of joy and sorrow can feel like a perpetual tilt-a-whirl. For a little while you enjoy the ride and then you can’t decide which way is up and which way is down. I’m there now.

This week my Knox described a PTSD flashback with surprising clarity in his own language at nearly eight. “It repeats,” he said. Through tears he explained, “I want to make it stop and I can’t. For some reason it’s always the same.” I was thankful for his description, affirmed him in his anxious grieving, and utterly covered in grief that my curly-haired jokester wears so much anguish. It’s humbling to hear my child describe those sorts of things. The images, the sounds are all strongly tied to quaking emotions. To watch him describe them would humble just about anyone. The depth of his anguish is a direct reflection of the depth of his love, no doubt.

Tonight Calvin ran down to our room choking back sobs. “I miss Haddon,” he sobbed with pain and anguish covering his face. He followed with clear recall of a time that he didn’t pull Haddon into his bed when Haddon cried for him. In an attempt to get Haddon sleeping in his own bed, Calvin obeyed my request. We all wanted to have Haddon sleep in his own bed in the same room as all of his siblings. It was a fiasco we were all trying to endure in the weeks leading up to his death. The reality of it is unsettling and probably always will be this side of heaven. It is one of Calvin’s biggest regrets. It is an ache that won’t be quenched for me until glory either. The aching he has for his brother is a tender display of the magnitude of love within. 

Calvin rocking Haddy to sleep at Mamaw's house. 

I’m worn out. I don’t have enough words these days for the complexity of things brewing inside of me. I try. Sometimes I go quiet. I do that way more often as of late. That’s humbling. It can feel so dark to grieve in the magnitude of loss. I have real hope. Truly. I have real joy. Existing right there with hope and joy is indescribable, immeasurable grief and anguish. It’s a yearning that I’ll never have enough words for. It’s also not socially acceptable to talk too deeply about the things that haunt us this far out. This kind of pain makes people get shifty. It’s a peculiar place. I recognize that I don’t want to be the downer in every moment, entirely focused on my own grief. It’s also just part of my every day, all of the time life. Grief never lends me a vacation day. If there is joy, it is welcomed whole-heartedly but it always exists alongside pain.

It’s difficult to navigate that complexity within myself, yet that reality grieves me terribly when I see it within my children. I want to extinguish the pain residing within their tender hearts. I can’t. I want to fill their hearts with the sweetest concoction of kindness, generosity, gentleness, and joy. I had high hopes for pouring myself out for them and leaving behind something they could imitate. Yet, in God’s providence we have this lot to bear. I feel helpless a lot, completely beyond my capacity for executing my own life. My pleading now is that my children will glean through my gripping desperation that Jesus is always faithful and He is always enough. I am not enough. I am weary and broken beyond recognition. Yet, I will praise the One who is worthy. I will lift up my hands in submission and surrender. With nothing but weakness I will yield all that I have and all that I am. I am begging God that they’ll learn something through that view of me, their broken Momma.

I do want to spend my days creating opportunities for joy to join sorrow, even when my weary bones keep telling me to go back to bed. I want juxtaposition as disorienting as it may be. I want a legacy that boldly displays my weakness and His perfect power. I want my kids to know the real truth. I have a meager offering, all that I have and all that I am is a meager offering. I’m fragile, weary, and worn. God is none of those things. He is not fragile. He never grows weary. He is not worn. He is alive. He defeated sin and death, and He’s coming again to redeem all that has been broken. He is worthy of adoration and praise in the best of times and in the worst. His love is unending and his kindness unceasing. His tenderness is evidenced in Jesus’s living and in His dying. He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He made Himself known to me and continually makes Himself known for His glory and for my comfort and satisfaction. The only satiating experience I’ll ever know is to seek God with my whole heart and find Him through the living Word of God. That’s what I want my kids to see in all of my aching weakness. God is glorious and He will never leave me alone. Ever. He’ll never leave them alone either.

Are you tired, weary, and worn? Are you so full of weakness that it’s all you see? Take heart, dear one. It is in our weakness that we finally rest in His power. Let your weary bones cry out to Him. Feast your tear-stained eyes on His Word and give Him full access to your shattered heart. For every look at your lot, take ten more at Christ. He’ll make you believe that redemption is coming. It will require endurance, possibly for far longer than you’d choose for yourself, but His relentless, unceasing love will be with you in every moment from now until that glorious day.