Sometimes, if I allow my mind to wander and migrate
untethered into the future, fear seeps into my heart. And sadness creeps in, holding
fear’s hand. I could tell you that’s because I fear for the world, with the current
state it’s in, or for the effects of global warming on the Earth, or because
we, like so many others, have often been lousy stewards of the gifts God has
bestowed upon us. Or, like President Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep
forever.”
No, my fear
is more selfish, and, if I allow it to, it would haunt and drive every decision
I make. Because I know the devastating emotional pain and internal terror that
entwines and smothers you when you lose a child, I recoil at the thought of
walking that path again. It’s one of the reminders that dogged me when
considering another pregnancy, constantly nipped at my heart through the
follow-up pregnancy, and shadowed me right into that pregnancy’s traumatic birth.
If I untether my healthy imagination, I can envision what the death of my
husband might feel like. (I’ve even had dreams about the event, and it leaves
me sweating and hyperventilating in heart pounding panic. I find myself
searching endlessly for him; wishing, aching to go back to the day before he
left me, or to relive weeks, months and years. Even in my dreams, I feel utterly
lost and hopeless. So disoriented. So…alone.)
Succumbing to
the haunts of future loss would drive me to sit home holed up in my safe,
darkened cave, unscathed by the world. It would make me shout, “No!” to every
physical risk my children or husband want to venture forth into.
When you
lose a child in childbirth, or lose a young child, you tend to love a little
harder, hang on a little more to the remaining offspring or your other loved
ones. Or you hang on with a vice-like clasp. You sometimes even smother. You
imagine horrible things. You let tomorrow’s un-materialized worries swallow the
day’s joys, and you often don’t allow the joys to happen. You suck all
thankfulness out of your heart and brain. You make your and everyone else’s
life dull and colorless.
But that’s
love’s side affect, isn’t it? Loss, and the pain of it? Love leaves you
vulnerable. Because you love, you can hurt. When you put yourself out there,
make yourself vulnerable to love, you take that risk. Joy and pain run
together, like confluent rivers. Everyday holds a chance you will lose
something, or someone. As you read this, somewhere in this world, someone has
just lost someone.
For me, it’s
a two-edged sword, because while I know God’s grace and trust in Him, I also
know that He both gives and takes away.
And it’s
the taking away that scares me. But taking away is sometimes part of the grace.
Trusting
Him doesn’t mean everything will turn out to my liking. It means believing,
knowing and living like Someone greater than you knows what’s best and may
decide to allow or cause something to happen that sucker punches and suctions
the joy right out of you. It’s knowing that the sin that brought destruction
and pain into the world lives on and flourishes, so I cannot be immunized
against that pain and suffering. (And I need to stop living my life like it can
be.)
It means
believing, knowing, and living like that Someone still sits on the throne, has
everything under control, and has already conquered the world, along with its loss,
pain and suffering so that I might enjoy an eternal life free of it. I just
want the eternal promises to kick in now, on my time schedule. In this life.
But I’m not
special. Like everyone else, I have to wait. I need to live right here, in the
middle of love and grace.
I also need
to live like I know He knows what I’m going through. In order to live that way,
I need to know Him. To know Him, I need to experience Him. To experience Him, I
need to know His Word and open myself up to Him. To know His Word, I need to be
reading it, saturating myself in it. You don’t get to know someone without spending
time with him. And the more time you spend with Him, the more you come to
understand and feel His unconditional love for you, and the more you feel His
grace that transcends loss, pain and suffering. That grace that draws you in
and gives you a different perspective on life.
Yet, even
though I feel that love, I sometimes find myself praying in a choked whisper,
“Please, God, don’t take my husband or sons from me. Not even one of them. I can’t
go through that again.” I pray it even though I know it may happen.
And so does
He. And even though He may not protect me from it, He will protect me in it. I
know that fact because I have lived it and can testify to it. Many of you have
also lived it and can testify to it. Because of that testimony, I can read my
world differently than others read it. I read the Word (Jesus) and point to His
promises that have been lived out in me, in others. I can sit down with you and
show you my travel log of the miraculous journey He’s taken me on. You have
your own you can show me, only you may not have realized Who the travel agent
was who planned and booked your trip.
As Ann
Voskamp says in her book, One Thousand Gifts:
Finding JOY in What Really Matters, “Only the Word is the answer to rightly
reading the world because the Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face
close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our
brimming ache, and whisper, ‘I know. I know.’”
It’s that
“I know, I know” that keeps me clinging to Him. He knows, and He knows what I
can take, even when I don’t think I can take it. It is the new eyes of my new heart
that see the world through a new perspective, through His eyes. It’s that love
and facing the future through His eyes that drives away the fear and keeps me
living wholly in this life.
So,
ultimately, I have a choice. I can stand with my face turned toward the fear of
loss, massaging it, examining it, becoming friendly with it; or I can turn my
back to it and refuse to give it time or energy. I can lay aside my old eyes
and let my new eyes see the world the way He sees it.
While I was
in the middle of writing this post, I received a message from a friend sent
through her Word for the Day email/prayer list email. She included this quote
by the author Donald Miller, the author of the semi-autobiographical book Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality:
“The most
often repeated commandment in the Bible is, “Do Not Fear.” It’s in there over 200 times. That means a couple
of things, if you think about it. It means
we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn’t let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to
fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle
suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated.
And I guess it serves that purpose. But
fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.”
I guess I’m
not the only one who struggles with fear and needs to do a better job at fighting
it. Since I cringe at the thought of having anyone say about me after I’m gone,
“She was nice, but she sure lived one heck of a boring life,” I’m determined to
shine my fear-fighting boxing gloves and go into battle with that emotion.
“Stand
firm, stand firm, stand firm!” Dr. Charles Stanley so often instructs.
Standing
firm is so much easier to do when you know you have the world’s Overcomer
holding you up from the back, or standing in front of you, taking all of those
arrows for you.
After you
weigh your options, you can cry out like the character George Bailey cries out
after weighing the pain of loss and disgrace with not living at all in the
movie It’s a Wonderful Life: “Please!
I want to live again. I want to live again. I want to live again. Please, God,
I want to live again.”
My prayer
for you is that if you have suffered the pain of loss, that you are at the
point where you can utter, “Please, God, help me live again!”
Until next week,
Thanks for joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
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