Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
Romeo & Juliet
Eli‘s daughter-in-law should have been celebrating. Instead she was dying as her son was passing through the birth canal. As the baby was being delivered the light was leaving her eyes. Her grief was “pulling her into the roots of the earth” (Anne Kennedy). Her final act in life was to name her child. She called him Ichabod. “God has left us.”
Grief can take us to dark places.
The other day I dug out an oldie and listened to the lyrics of “Children are a Treasure from the Lord.” One of the verses in the song says “at 6 our children begin school, at 16 they drive a car, and at 21 we let them go on their first date (but of course they’ll be at home in bed by eight, wink, wink)…” but for Sandy and me the lyric expands to “at 24 we hear they’ve died of a drug overdose.”
Parents should never have to hear that version.
There’s a psalm (Psalm 9) that is directed to be sung to the tune of “the death of a loved one.” Some of us feel like that psalm. One day it’s praise and celebration, we’re part of a giant assembly…. then death hits close to home and we feel isolated, put in a “special” category. We suddenly fall into the “bereaved” class. It becomes our identity.
Our lives from that point on are sung to the tune of death.
A Cherokee princess in our family line was given the name “Morning Dove,” as in “dove of the morning”; but after a tragedy on the Trail of Tears in which a soldier killed her husband, the rest of her days she was still called “Mourning Dove” but with a tragic twist.
Time is marked by the date of our loved one’s passing. Life has turned our “morning” into “mourning.” We try to reach for some idea of normalcy but we can’t get that song out of our head. It’s stuck on repeat. The verses remind us we can never fully find our way back to normal.
“As the one-year anniversary of Matthew’s death approaches, I have been shocked by some subtle and not-so-subtle comments indicating that perhaps I should be ready to ‘move on.’ … They want the old Rick and Kay back. They secretly wonder when things will get back to normal for us – when we’ll be ourselves…I have to tell you – the old Rick and Kay are gone. They’re never coming back. We will never be the same again. April 5, 2013 has permanently marked us.…” (Kay Warren)
When you’ve lost someone very dear to you, you discover such a grief will be the only thing you will think about for a great long while. And then you will go through another season where it will be the *first* thing you think about…until it becomes the *second* thing. But it’s always there, throbbing and pulsing and breathing. It never leaves you.
Grief is like being forced into exile. We’ve all taken trips to places we want to go, spent weeks planning and saving and packing and buying outfits and googled the sites and flavors of the destination, grabbed all the travel books and brochures we can get our hands on. Perhaps we’ve even learned some of the basic words and phrases of another country so we can at least feel like we fit in.
The journey of grief doesn’t look like that. There’s no way to prepare for it. It’s a language there are no books to learn from. It’s an unknown tongue of an alien country.
Imagine being displaced from your homeland and put on a forced march to somewhere you’d really rather not go. As I mentioned, my ancestors were forced onto the Trail of Tears, and exiled to, for them, a foreign country.
Once upon a time in the ancient middle east the survivors of a brutal holocaust were strung together through their noses and wrists and force-marched nearly 1000 miles to their worst nightmare.
One of its religious leaders told them, while it will be difficult to do, to carry on with the business of their lives; planting, marrying, and raising their kids.
This was their “new normal” he said. He told them to settle in for the long haul, to trust the plan of God, that they’d come through on the other end a newer, freer remnant of grace. His counsel was not well received.
“How can we sing the songs of our homeland in a foreign place?” they lamented.
Jeremiah didn’t take them through the five stages of grief, he didn’t offer a quick-fix a,b,c formula, but he did offer them a time frame: 70 YEARS to get through it.
….In other words, a lifetime.
I know Sandy and I are only seven years in, but I’m not entirely sure there is an expiration date on grief.
Scientists are working hard to develop a patch that will enable people to pass through the five stages of grief more quickly…I’m pretty sure there’s not a vaccine for sorrow. That aside, this is what we’ve learned so far on our short journey… our five contributions to the five stages, if you will:
1. Grief is good.
The Lord is most tender with the broken-hearted and that’s a good thing. He doesn’t want to fix you, He wants to heal you. There’s a difference. One is mechanical, lacking artistry, the other is relational, a long-term, hands-on, intimate shaping process.
🔸Grief winnows out the stagnant parts of you and makes a fertile place for new mercies. Tim Keller writes, “Sorrow and grief drive you into God and show you resources you never had and never knew you needed.” He said he only “half believed” in the resurrection before he got cancer. Now it’s more vibrantly real to him. Not only the doctrine of it, but the down-to-earth rubber-meets-the-road flesh-and-blood marrow-in-the-bone reality of it. For myself my grief has driven me deeper into the gospel.
🔸Grief reminds us we are made for another world. Grief points our prayers and orient our hearts toward God rather than away from him. Grief ruins us for this world and gets us pining for the next.
🔸Grace is a byproduct of grief. It teaches us a whole new vocabulary of empathy. Because of Graham‘s story, we are more quick to give others a wider birth in theirs.
2. The goal is Jesus, not healing.
Healing is nice, healing is desirable, but Jesus is better. Just give me Jesus. Don’t focus so much on getting better, on getting past, that Jesus plays second fiddle. He’s not another resource who’s “here in case you need me” … he’s all you need!
Tim Keller was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He wrote in Atlantic magazine how he found in the psalms a God who is much more than a “maddeningly complex” “difficult deity” but One who comes across as “a real being” not made up, a God who is there, in biography not just theory, and in so doing “found a faith that was more than a match for death.” He’s gone from believing that “God’s not only good but he has been able to taste his goodness.”
In Psa 55 David cries, “See me!” “Pay attention to me!” “Stop the pain!” “I wish I could run away and hide”….and ends by saying, “I see you!” vv1-2 —- “SEE ME! I AM SURROUNDED!” v23 — “I SEE YOU! I AM SATISFIED!”
3. Don’t be too eager to work your way back to normal.
The LORD is a shelter for the oppressed (crushed, collapsed), a refuge in times of trouble.
(Psa 9:9)
Take all the time you need in the care of the Father. Let him surround you and hold you to his breast. Let him hold vigil over you. Quiet yourself in the shelter of his goodness. He is near the broken-hearted and as the Spirit “hovered” over the earth in the beginning, he “hovers” over you in your “deep waters” of sorrow.
You’ll feel pressured from some to get healed, to move on, but the Savior has prepared a place for you. Lie down in these green pastures of grace.
Shorten your pace, guard your heart and your schedule, lower your arms, breathe, be present, and listen for the hum of the homeland in the right now.
Linger awhile in a place called, ‘Higgaon. Selah’ (Psa 9:16)
Higgaion means “meditation,” and, combined with Selah, seems to denote a pause of unusual solemnity and attention. The basic meaning is a low moaning sound, characteristic of the mourning wail of a dove.
It’s lament.
It’s “groanings too deep for words.”
It’s deep calling to deep.
Even though God reverses our “gates of death” (v13), there is still the ongoing mourning wail of the tired soul who longs for life restored, for the final, Great Gettin’ Up Morning of our Glad Reunion Day.
4. Don’t miss a moment.
This may sound strange, especially after the previous point. Don’t become so self-absorbed in your sorrow that you miss your cue. “Sunday’s Comin’” but right now it’s “Saturday” and there are a lot of grieving people out there who have questions about where to go from here.
Someone needs your story. The hurting body of Christ desperately needs to hear about your faith in Jesus. We suffer, Paul writes, that we might be a gospel-giver to someone in need. And God makes sure there’s always someone who needs you!
As I was putting these thoughts down, I was listening to my wife masterfully comfort a soul who has just learned her mom has 6 months to live. At one point the grieving young woman said to my wife, “One thing I’ve loved about you as I’ve watched you through the years is that you show up.” Let your valley experience grant you opportunity and move you to “show up” for another.
5. You can’t trust your emotions but you can trust good theology.
It seems a little boy went to Sunday school and learned a new song. When he got home his mother asked him what he learned and he told her, “Trust and Okay.”
Now that’s good theology!
The mind can descend far lower than the body, for in it there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in 10,000 ways, and die over and over again each hour. I am the subject of depression so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to. But I always get back again by this – I know that I trust Christ. I have no reliance but in him, if he fails, I shall fall with him. But if he doesn’t, I won’t.
– Charles Spurgeon
Kay Warren: “I don’t know for sure how God is going to take the calamity of my son’s mental illness and his death and use it victoriously; it’s only been a year. But what I am certain of is this. God’s love is still working.”
The Psalms are a catalog of raw emotions: Fear. Loneliness. Sorrow. Anger. Shame. Abandonment. Weariness. Defeat. Discouragement.
David gives us an inspired vocabulary to express our frustration with God’s “painful providence.” But he also fills all the spaces in between with robust truth:
Psalm 13
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever… How long will you hide your face? How long must I have sorrow in my heart…?… But I have trusted in your steadfast love… I will sing to the LORD because he has built bountifully with me.
Psalm 34:19
Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
Psa 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalms 119:50
This is my comfort in my affliction (misery), that your promise gives me life.
But a few verses later:
Psalms 119:82
My eyes long for your promise; I ask, “When will you comfort me?”
You can’t trust your emotions. They are important to God, and necessary in your healing, but they must always answer to good theology.
The song asks, “Does Jesus Care?”
Honest question. It’s a question we’ve all wrestled with. But the refrain doesn’t allow the question to hang out there as it boldly exclaims: “oh yes he cares, I know he cares…!”
Horatio Spafford lost four daughters at sea and yet his heart could pen the words, “it is well with my soul.” Each verse of that song is chock-full of theology.
Jesus warned his disciples that in this world they would have tribulations.
But take heart; I have overcome the world.
He told a grieving Martha,
I am the resurrection and the life.
In our moments of despair, our theology matters. To God, others, and ourselves.
In closing, I recently finished all the “step psalms” (15 of them) which help guide all of us pilgrims through the stages of our earthly journey. The final psalm, Psalm 134, is only 23 words long. It’s about arrival. You made it. Breathe. It’s over. The shortest step we will ever take will be moving from death into the presence of Christ.
The first verse gives us a clue for whom such a moment will be especially precious: those who “stand in the night” holding their torch in the house of God.
My fellow sufferers, I can almost see you in the heavenlies. One star shines different from another in glory and those who shine brightest are those who have been broken the deepest and still love Jesus with all their heart; who still “Trust and Okay.” You all are “standers in the night” and the Lord wants you to know he sees you shining like the sun.
