You just want to go home. It’s been a busy day, and despite the incessant distractions, you still notice them–Heartache and Hurt–following you home again. They never give you a break, and even when you try to sleep, they work to ensure that your empty room is less hollow than your heart. I suppose it’s a necessary healing process, when you are left no choice but to bid farewell to someone in death. The contempt, confusion, and considerable sorrow of losing someone in this magnitude does more than crack our surface. When do you stop hearing your dad’s advice in your head before your own voice or stop comparing every shade of blue that resembles the variety of your son’s eyes? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I know what grief inevitably follows.
Recently, I attended a Christian women’s conference where Angie Smith (Selah/Todd Smith’s wife, blogger, author, inspirational speaker) spoke. She spoke openly about the loss of her daughter, Audrey, who did not survive beyond childbirth. The doctors had given them a choice early on to terminate the pregnancy, knowing that she would not survive, and Angie chose to wait and to pray. Audrey was born, alive only minutes, weighing less than five pounds. Angie’s statement after this still resonates with me: “I was given the option to say goodbye to her sooner, and I didn’t. And now, she will forever have weight in this world.” Then, she had a moment of silence for all of the women who had lost a child through miscarriage, tragedy, health complications, abortion, and the list goes on.
Loss is similar to a smile, even mathematics—it is the same in every country, regardless of the means by which it is carried out. The hole still eats away at the same nagging pace, the bitter aftertaste lingering far longer than it should, drowning each heartbeat in more contemptible solace.
The hurt doesn’t change, just the decibel at which it resonates.
It may never stop tormenting you, but the truth is that it doesn’t have to swallow us whole. John 8:51 says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death.” I hold this tightly in the depths of my bones because, not only does it speak to my soul, but it wraps a warm blanket of truth around my memory and heartache over losing a life, several lives, actually.
My daughter is nearly a year old, which still seems impossible to imagine. The other night, she didn’t feel well and woke up rather later than expected, choking on pitiful, whimpering sobs. When I picked her up, she reached for my shirt, clenched it tightly, and burrowed like a small rabbit who had been rescued from the depths of the wilderness. She buried her tear-laden face into my shoulder and squeezed her tiny fist around the sleeve of my shirt while I rocked her, softly singing Bob Dylan, and brushing her hair with my fingertips. Within forty-five minutes, she was snoring. I gently returned her to her crib and quietly exited the room. A few minutes later, she cried back out. This time, only for a moment and she was back to sleep. I knew what happened, though. She stirred and realized that I was gone.
I imagine, to a one-year-old, a momentary glimpse of losing a parent is catastrophic. As a 27-year-old, losing anyone who means anything to you can be just as damaging, whether it’s a parent, a child, a spouse, a best friend, a cousin, a grandparent, a co-worker, and the list goes on.
I know my daughter has some sense that this is normal and I will return when she wakes up. As adults, we tend to view death as a more permanent condition, a final farewell, when in reality, we should hold this view too. We should see their absence as a temporary separation, a moment where they stepped out of the room to go home, and we will one day join them again. I certainly do not believe that this is the end. I believe that it is important to focus on the endurance of love rather than the finality of death.
“Put me like a seal over your heart, Like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death; . . . Its flashes are flashes of fire, The very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, Nor will rivers overflow it.”
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
We typically have no control over the outcome, no choice in the matter, and our uncertainty keeps us awake. So many of us claim to have a desire to relinquish control—she doesn’t like to pick the restaurant, he lets you plan the weekends—but once we lose whatever control that we thought we had, we lose some sense of ourselves.
Our pragmatic perspective then morphs, before our very eyes, into an overwhelming discomfort that paralyzes the mind from commanding the body to react or simply understand. When we get a bittersweet taste of control over our environment, we want it to stay around a little longer so we can skate around in its comfort zone and defy the uncertainty in our hearts. We begin to like it.
When a life is plucked away from us, we lose our footing again. Then, we look for someone to blame.
Isaiah 25:8 says, “He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of his people from all the earth.”
I know that the ache of saying goodbye to someone in this life will never fully remove itself from the scarred tattoo that’s been placed on your heart. I know God, though, and He is capable of comfort beyond anything that I will ever know how to explain in words. When He knows your heart, there’s no escaping His love for you, and I will admit, as vacant as I once was, He certainly found my attention as well as the gaping, wounded hole in my heart.
I am praying for you tonight, dear reader, for your circumstances, for the torment in your heart, and for your deliverance. I pray that you come to know the ultimate Healer.
God Bless,
M
“But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality,
then will come about the saying that is written, ‘death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren,
be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,
knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 15:54-58
Blue Withens 