On the couch, my lamp beside me to illuminate the gloomy outside, I opened the cover and began to read with that feeling of dread you get right as the roller coaster you're on begins to edge over the top and you dig your fingers into the rail holding you in and close your eyes tight and hold your breath. I absorb the pain of others. I wear it in my bones and breathe it in my lungs. I knew this story was going to hurt.
I liked this woman the moment I took in her words. She was honest and raw and said brave what most people, especially most christian people, don't dare admit because it's not "nice." You probably couldn't, wouldn't say it at church. But it's truth groaned out loud and real. "I wish I had nothing to say on the matter of loss,but I do. Because one ordinary day I encouraged my two kids to go out and play in the rain and only one child came home. I learned in that moment what many other people already knew; that it can all turn to sh#@ in a heartbeat. All of it. Our families. Our futures. Our dreams. Even our faith."
I got to the part about only one kid coming home and shared grief spilled down my face. I had to stop and walk into the kitchen and get a drink of water. I wasn't really thirsty. I just wanted to know I could go to another room and make her story not be mine. It scared me. It scared me how life can start to look like things are finally falling into place, like dreams are being answered, like new horizons are opening and then all of a sudden somebody dies. Just without good reason, as if there could ever be one.
This mother, Anna, she taught me what a person needs in those moments. She saw people that were close to her disappear and yet others, brand new in her life, be very present and reach out unsure but willing. She learned to let them in because she feared herself alone. "I want to go over the afternoon of the accident again, as if discussing what details we know will help my mind grasp how any of this could have happened. I want us to look at one another's faces and cry. To question God. To hear that Jack meant something. It is in the telling and retelling that we work our way through painful territory and gain insight. Grief is my work right now."
My heart yearns to understand, to know how to walk out real, this thing that hits us hard; how to read my Bible and sing my worship songs and have them sit solid in my spirit while I cry and wonder why God thought something was a good idea. To trust the One who gives and takes away. To bless Him. I want to choose to be able to hear the ugly, to stomach the sickening, to grab hold unafraid the hand of someone falling to pieces, to hold mine out when I see myself falling, to not need to make sense in the middle of it all and just be and wait and sit silent on the inside.
I know someone. July 10th? Someone they loved went to heaven on that day last year and those that loved her stood and watched. And wrestled to trust anyway when the question screamed loud; "But.....God??" I will make a marker in my heart for that day; to press on in honor of the pain and questions and courage. To live full and walk out honest truth. July 10th should never be just another day.
"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39
For Doris, Jan, Michael, Billy and all the "Jacks" this memory touches.
Thank you for bravely reading Rare Bird. For honoring the ones who lost big-time on this day a year ago. And for sharing yourself.
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