Grief

I hesitate to give this post that title. Today is a good day. This week has been a good week. I have vacillated between wanting to share and feeling it untimely … unneeded. But I am reminded over and over of the power of sharing our stories. The power of voicing pain and inviting vulnerability. Honestly … not for the comments of support (though incredibly sweet), but for the surge of shared strength, that others in pain would know solidarity and not isolation.

May promises some sweet relief, but a lot of the past weeks and months have been spent under a dark cloud. I fight it, tooth and nail, and like the fleeting spring sun it appears and recedes with an impulse all its own. I think a lot about last year. I keep reading and re-living it. I fill my days to over-flowing. I try to play catch up from last year, coping by creating a whirlwind that feels safe in its flurry. Alone, at night, or in those quiet pockets of the day, I fight a weariness, a sadness, a discouragement that bubbles from my very depths. Last month marked a year that Forrest has been in Remission. Sixteen months since Diagnosis. We’ve come so far, but there is a distance from the end of this story that feels paralyzing. We have over two years of treatment until his body feels a day without chemo. Years until I might whisper cancer-survivor. More until the medical community will agree. I wonder constantly: where is that other shoe. Forrest’s journey has been the public face of a year of both heartbreak and healing for us on a number of levels. Cancer, it seems, can pervade relationships and homes too. The lifestyle we have wears on us both. Our kids feel fragile.

It all tastes sour. Like a lemon drop, the acidity and sweetness intermingle painfully.

I am angry and sad. Then frustrated and bewildered. It feels ridiculous and unwarranted.

How could I dare be that selfish. Dare be that ungrateful. So much progress has been made, so much relief felt. Miracle after miracle, healing on so many levels. The undeniable truth is that Forrest is doing and feeling great. It’s just me. … I have struggled these past months almost more than in the very Valley of the Shadow that was last year.

Maybe its some seasonal depression, maybe its straight weariness; maybe its loneliness. But I think this cloud is grief, and I don’t know why it’s here. Grief is a funny thing. It honors no timetable, it gives no warning, it may delay but it won’t forget you. Last year brought pain-numbing gratitude, joy even….defiant joy…. an inexplicable peace that comes only with complete surrender and the blanket of His nearness. This year that peace is fleeting. And God feels more like a distant cousin than my beloved companion. Have I strayed or has He?

We have been forged in the fire and, as happens, clarity brought forth. But these days, I fear the heat has made me brittle. I’m tired of this place. I feel left behind, relegated to only this story even as the world spins forward. The promise feels distant, the horror nipping at my heels. Yes, I have hope. I’ve always had hope. But hope is made real in the future. It is here I still sit, caught in the quagmire of the present. And the call to simply be here—still— turns my patience rancid. Bitterness becomes a foe I struggle to fend off. If this is grief, I feel stuck in it … and stuck is the last place I want to be.

For months I’ve been jotting down journal snippets on napkins and diaries, church sermon notes and blog drafts. They use different words, but the same cry: God, where are you? I don’t feel strong enough anymore…

The deafening silence makes me angrier and I dig in, calling out the promises I know He won’t deny. And slowly, I realize, it is only my sadness that is stopping the whirlwind enough to point me back to Him. It is only in my perceived abandonment that I begin to feel the truth again that He will never leave me nor forsake me. It is only in my wilderness that I allow Him to chisel away the idols I so quickly reclaim of control and comfort and significance.

The tug of war in my soul strengthens… I admit my ugly truth: God, I am disappointed… in You. Even now typing out the words my eyes sting and my chest tightens. I know what I am questioning. At its core, its this: God, are You trustworthy? My eyes go to this crumpled up note from church the other day … “He doesn’t tell us what to do without reminding us what He’s done.” And all I can think about are all the times last year He came through. Over and over and over again. Every. Single. Dark. Time. He’s asking me to still trust Him…to keep trusting Him … but not without first reminding me of every horrific day last year that was made bearable by His presence.

And if I doubted His ask; if I doubted his promises; If I doubted His proof, this past week or two has stripped away any semblance that He could still be distant. There: in that beautiful conversation about loss and pain. In that reminder of forced joy, in that book and in that podcast, in that song and that verse and in that sermon. He drove it home this week over and over and over. And the reminder is this: I can sit in this process because I am assured He has a purpose. The waiting and the grieving and the aching are strengthening. They are preparing.

Lysa Terkeurst’s words resonate deeply: This process isn’t a cruel way to keep you from the promise; it’s the exact preparation you’ll need to handle the promise.

Lauren Daigle sings I will lift my eyes, even in the pain. Above all the lies… I have seen Giants fall; I have seen mountains move, because of You. I remember.

In John 16 and Psalm 130 and and 1 Peter 5 and 2 Corinthians 12 and James 1 and Colossians 1 and on and on and on.

Trust the process. Trust the dying of self. Trust the grief. Even when you can’t understand it.

I was honored to hear multiple stories these past weeks of other peoples suffering. I needed it. God used it. And I’m reminded that maybe my struggle in this season isn’t just for me either… maybe God wants to use these hard lessons to show that His purpose is not the pain… His purpose is the promise on the other side. My March and April were cold and lonely and hard. It doesn’t all just go away, but those showers inevitably bring May’s promised flowers. I believe that. I do trust that. Maybe you also are in a cold April season, and I guess I just want you to know I’m fighting for the sunshine with you. And like the watchman in Psalm 130 waiting for the dawn, I know it will, indeed, come. Hang on, dear one.