Burning Down

Grief is odd.

Somehow the head and the heart don't communicate, which leads to... I don't know... discombobulation. Isn't it strange that life goes on? When your world falls apart, it's bizarre to see people just driving their cars, picking up the kids, playing at the park, buying groceries, going out on a date.

It doesn't make sense.

Grief doesn't make sense. How can your mind know that life as you knew it is over, finished, done, dead, and that it's time to pull up your bootstraps and move on, and yet your heart still have this heavy, thick, sticky, burden of sadness so weighty on your chest that you can barely breathe? Within one body, there's a rip between head-knowledge and heart-knowledge and it's name is Grief.

This year my life burned down. To the cellar, actually. And all the adjacent buildings and barns. Fields and woods, too. It took some time, and it was a messy, messy series of events, and I apparently missed a lot of the warning sirens, but it's gone now.

The worst part is that a big chunk of it is my fault. I am greatly responsible. I didn't burn it down, but I added fuel. I made it so much worse, hurting my kids, hurting everyone in the vicinity actually, and the heaviness of that truth remains. I cannot avoid it. I keep laying my wrongdoing, sin, stupidity, selfishness, and on and on, down at the feet of Jesus, but occasionally they crawl back up to my throat and squeeze tightly and must be laid down again. The sorrow of culpability and failure.

After years of crying out to God to heal my brokenness, marriage, family, and our life that none of us could endure as is any longer, and knowing that although He could do that instantaneously, my husband wasn't willing. He was simply gone and was taking our eldest son with him, and said that he had decided to be done with me and our life a decade or more ago. A decade! I had been trying to hold our family together with tape, and glue, and stick-to-it-iveness, and sheer will, and spit, and sweat for all that time and it was for nothing. And while I was at it, I tried to control, and manage, and manipulate, and protect all my people from what I had hoped to prevent in my own strength which only seriously damaged everyone around me, including God.

Upon hearing this news, I spent quite a bit of time lying in the bottom of the shower wishing I could go down the drain along with the soapy water. I complained to the Lord. A lot. I fell on my face and wailed. Sometimes in public -- like on the treadmill at the gym, or walking on the beach, which was embarrassing but inescapable. For hours at a time I cried before Him. Finally, in the middle of one of these long rants before God, I had a vision. It was of me sitting on a pile of ashes crying and groaning. But, instead of getting up and brushing myself off and cleaning up the mess, I did a strange thing. I grabbed handfuls of those ashes and filled my pockets and poured them on my head and stuffed that gray nastiness into my mouth and wailed over the loss and the emptiness. I threw a big ol' fit trying to hang on to a pile of dead, dirty nothingness.

The image startled me. "Is that what I've been doing, Lord? I'm an ash-saver? An ash-eater?" The answer was a shocking and resounding

"Yes!"

In the middle of that conversation, because grief is odd, I couldn't help but think,

"Does this suffering make my ash look big?"

How is this funny I ask you? But, God and I laughed together. Laughed and cried.

So, in this strange burned out place of loss, the sweetest thing began to happen. God met me here in a way I've never even known was possible. In gentle, tender, whispering ways, He met my emptiness and showed me His beauty -- in nature, in quietude, in the kindness of others, in sending just the right people into my children's lives, in providing for our immediate needs, our daily bread. He comforted me and taught my heart to be thankful and sing praises in the middle of despair which seems like it would be a dichotomy and yet it is not. He invited me to pray out loud and bring all of myself to Him assuring me that He could take it. That that's what He actually wanted from me: a deeper relationship, intimacy, the real me before the real and Holy God. He taught me to transparently model for my children humility and repentance, awe and thanksgiving for God's daily mercies and provision, and to walk in ever-deepening trust and relationship with our Savior.

For that I am wildly grateful, which is strange, don't you think? To be glad to have had my whole life burn down and to have lost almost everything I ever held dear because Jesus was already there beforehand is kind of weird. He knew this overwhelming loss and suffering would nearly take me out, that it would shake the very foundation until everything was uprooted, and He already had compassion for me. In fact, you know what I realized? God actually allowed it all because He wanted ME, my whole heart and soul to be His alone!

That was and is a beautiful comfort. In the middle of suffering.

Peace & distress smashed up together.


So, yeah, grief is odd.




"He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted...
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion --
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor."

from Isaiah 61