Thanks to some birthday money from mom the computer has a new harddrive and I’m back online (still no camera though). That said, the sudden access to communication hasn’t been the easiest to deal with. News from home looked something like this:
The house was broken into. A friend is watching her mom go through radiation treatment for cancer while trying to find a balance between being there for the family and living her own life. Another friend is watching her family tear itself apart at the seams. One of my oldest friends is at his wits end dealing with an injury that’s changed his life. And after being there for his mom (who is also a surrogate mother to myself and all my oldest friends) as she recovers from part of her lungs being removed a couple months ago, my best friend lost his father suddenly last week.
I know life’s a pretty big mess on a good day, that it falls apart without any warning and can’t be put back as it was, but normally there’s some pause between the fractures. This is just…a lot. Thing is, everything I’ve been coming across lately has been about mourning, loss, storms of life and all that. We’re reading through Job at school, having discussions on loss and trials at church, and other random places that just keep bringing the same subject up. I’ve found myself sharing the story of Leia and what our family has been through more in the last month than the whole of this last year combined. It’s kept me thinking.
And what I’m thinking is trials suck. Mourning sucks. Losing people, losing hope, losing security, losing trust – it feels like you’re screaming at an avalanche to stop as it buries you under 300 tonnes of earth. But when do you cling harder to the ones you love most? When are you held tighter? If you think about a child, when does a parent hold them closer than when they are comforting them in their fear or pain? It’s the same with us and God. He doesn’t wish these things on us any more than a human parent for their child, but in all the parables and lessons on life’s storms and pains, it’s always worded as ‘when’ they come, not ‘if.’ And in those times He does what every parent does – He wraps His huge arms around us and holds us closer than any other time, because in our desperate pain is when we let Him nearest. When we are the weakest. I couldn’t really wrap my head around the idea of ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’ for the longest time. I mean, isn’t it better to not have to mourn than to just be comforted when you lose something you’ll never get back? But I kind of get it now – those who mourn get to be closer and more intimitely familiar with God than all the rest of us. The avalanche of earth becomes a blanket of arms and chest on which to shed your tears. The pain may not diminish, but the presence of God rises up to meet it toe to toe, tonne for tonne, a gentle word for every tear, peace and comfort to balance the pain and anguish. Dad stoops down, picks us up, and holds us as tight as we can bear until the pain subsides and our tears are shed. That’s the blessing.
I obviously don’t look forward to those moments when I need Him most. I’m just not a big fan of pain. But I can truly say that I have been blessed in my times of mourning with an intimacy with God that I’ve not experienced in any other circumstance. So as much as I’d prefer to take away the pain my friends and family are going through, I am left mourning along side them and praying that they would know this blessing.
