I sit in my favorite chair. Watching outside as the rain falls, beating on the window, blurring my vision.
I remember where I sat on their couch when they told the news of your death.
I was frozen in time. My mind trying to digest the news, the moment.
Everyone around me still moved; I couldn’t.
Everything running through my head and nothing, all at the same time.
I tried to comprehend; I couldn’t.
I began to ask questions. The why, what, when, where and how kinds of questions.
Still trying to wrap my mind around the incomprehensible.
How can everyone around me keep living, keep moving?
Why does God allow death to happen?
What could I have done to change the result?
When was her death date really supposed to be? When is mine?
Where did everything spin out of control and lead to her death?
These are the real questions that plagued me.
The questions that resurfaced, and I suppressed again and again, because it hurt too much to actually think through.
It hurt my heart and made my headache from all the crying.
Nothing seemed to comfort; nothing could get close enough because the questions bared the door to healing.
A dear friend asked me how I was.
I was still reeling. Out came words from my incoherent thinking that spoke of my shock.
I digested the truth, the concrete answers of what happened.
My brain was still trying to accept the truth.
I couldn’t even cry at first. It took so long to sink in.
The rain is pelting the window, harder then before.
Yet, there’s a stillness, a peace.
How in the midst of turmoil can there be peace?
I almost want to reject it for the grief in my heart weighs heavily, but I need it. It sustains me.
I cry for all she won’t become.
I cry for who she was to me.
I cry for me without her.
I grieve.
I wrestle back and forth as anger, pain and hurt rages.
I feel like I’m in a battle but its all me and who can I be against?
Maybe it’s me against God.
So the age old “why” questions cloud my mind.
They beg answers that don’t seem to come.
Or maybe all that rages so greatly inside blocks the reasonable or what I can’t seem to accept.
Because it’s not ok.
And she’s gone.
Part of me is gone.
Yet, so much stays inside of me.
The part in my mind that remembers.
The part in my heart that loves.
Though You have made me see troubles, many and bitter, You will restore my life again, from the depths of the earth You will again bring me up. You will... comfort me once again. Psalms 71:20-21
So I allow His will.
There is no other choice. I surrender my war that rages. I wave my white flag.
I accept that You hate death but allowed someone precious to my heart to pass away until the end. When You call us.
The rain stops beating as hard on the window. More of Your peace flows over me.
I peel back the curtains. My vision clears some too.
All the years with her. I saw Him in her so many times. She challenged me so many times to be better. Why does the best have to pass so quickly, so young, sometimes.
The ache, the rawness, the trembling.
Is there hope? I start to sink.
I look up. I look to You because I’m desperate.
The sun cuts through; the clouds start to move away. Your hope sets in, sinking to the very depth of me. I need You. No one else can reach where it aches. No one else can see the pain and catch my tears that are now drying up or running out.
I stand before the Son, warming my face, drying my tears. Watching the rain drops roll down the window pain and ebbing away. Washing away everything but the remembering, the missing. The knowing that she’s gone; hopefully with Him.
How does the sunset and rise and people move about on a day like this? How can it rise tomorrow, held down by the weight, the loss? Can’t it be broken and let the sorrow wallow for a long night?
I remember her smile, her life, her tenacity. I can barely see outside of my heart, my sorrow.
I look up to make sure You’re still there, that You still care and You streak down the sky a rainbow that seems to stretch to me.
You lift my soul as I follow the colorful path that recounts Your faithfulness through the storm and hope of the Son shining forth toward tomorrow.
Light ricocheting and refracting, bent for my pleasure, my hope, and my promise.
I hear Him whisper a promise that spans grief’s distance and a hope that acts as a salve.
It still hurts but there’s hope.
I thank God for equipping our minds with memories and our hearts with depth...
To hold the love.
And I thank Him for the path that leads past rainbow promises to eternal hope in Him.
Without it, we’d all just die.
Yet, she didn’t just go. She left after giving, after living, after loving.
And so I understand why the sun must rise and I must move.
It’s what He wants. The living and laughing and loving and giving.
Even in finding Him in the sorrow and grief and in the pain of loss.
And knowing there is purpose and promise within it all.
Praise be to... God... the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubled, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 1 Corinthians 1: 3-5
