Sometimes, when we’ve worn ourselves out with all the internal kicking and screaming, we find what we’re left with isn’t the anger at the perceived injustice, it isn’t our rage at the medical machine, it isn’t frustration over what we can and cannot do or envy of the lives others seemingly get to live or indignant protest over our long list of grievances. When we get to the place where our anger has all been spent and our energy is looooooooong gone and our best efforts at fixing our own bodies and lives have all been in vain, we find what remains in their place has but one name.

Grief.  

Pure and simple.

I remember finally reading Hind’s Feet on High Places, long before it became one of my favorite and most personally transformative books of all time.  I left it on my nightstand for years, stubbornly avoiding it because I thought the friend who’d recommended it to me was trying to fix me.  Several years later, having moved it from the nightstand to the piles on the floor and then back to the pile on the nightstand, I finally began reading it, stumbling over the prelude and slogging through some of the language.  It began to pick up for me after a bit, and by the time I got a few chapters in I was finally hitting a groove with her writing style and beginning to see why this friend had recommended it.

Then I hit chapter four.

Chapter four found our female protagonist, Much Afraid, finally free from the grips of her family of fears, and ready to begin her spiritual journey with the Shepherd, who has promised to take her to the High Places and to transform her completely.

As she and the Shepherd discuss the journey, the Shepherd informs her he will not be physically present with her all the time, but he’s given her two very trusted traveling companions for the journey—companions “I have chosen myself with great care, as the two who are most able to help you and assist you”—who will see to it she reaches her destination.

After she’s recovered from her initial disappointment that the Shepherd will not be with her around every bend, Much Afraid relents internally to his decision and affirms that she will fully place her trust in him and the companions he has chosen with intention for her.

Until she meets them.

They were large and imposing.

They were dressed entirely in black.

They were cloaked in anxious silence.

And their names were Sorrow and Suffering.

I immediately put the book back on my nightstand and it stayed there, unopened, for another five years.

It took Much Afraid a five-minute conversation with the Shepherd to surrender to his will for her.  To affirm her complete trust in him.  To lay down her desires for Joy and Peace to accompany her on this journey and instead take the hands of the two she perhaps feared most.

It took me FIVE YEARS just to pick the book back up again, let along acquiesce to this journey.

That’s what this path is like, at times, is it not?

A long, steep, winding trek through darkness and fog in the constant company of companions we never asked for in the first place and aren’t certain we have the strength to embrace.

Our human tendency toward occasional self-pity or the opposite tendency of some toward unmitigated optimism aside, I’m firmly convinced you cannot walk this path without taking a moment to acknowledge there are things that have been LOST.

And just as there were things I was hesitant to say when I wrote my last post about limits, I am apprehensive to put that statement out there lest some read this post and automatically assume I am a pessimist or negative or an eternal victim or overly dramatic.

But sometimes, guys, you just gotta put it out there.

Sometimes, we have to be honest about the fact that THIS STUFF SUCKS EGGS.

There’s simply no way around it.

There are indeed many things gained in the refining furnace of chronic pain or illness or fatigue or anxiety or whatever it is that holds tight to your life and won’t let go.  We will talk about many of them.  We will talk about living out of a place of peace and purpose and psalm-like doxology.  We will learn what it means to persevere when you can’t get out of your bed or into your clothes.  We will consider what it means to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.  We will find the strength to continue our wrestling matches with God and to proclaim, in our tentative tenacity, I will not let go unless you bless me.

But you’d better believe we’re also gonna get muddy in the process.

Because where I live,

THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF RAIN.

This, to me, is the essence of psalm-living.  To get to doxology, there must first be lament.

There must be an honest crying out to the Lord, as David did regularly, demanding to know Where the heck are you?  Why have you forsaken me????  We must be willing to give voice to our innermost pain and confusion and bring it before the throne, as my daughter has frequently this past year, seeking and longing to hear his voice answer What kind of love is this?!?!?!  There must be requests made, just as David pleaded for his own needs before the Lord—Look on me and answer!  Deliver me from this pit!  Make my voice to sing again.  Restore life to my body.  LET THESE BONES YOU’VE CRUSHED REJOICE.  We must follow the model, if our attempts to live as one after God’s own heart are to be authentic.

This is where we’ve lived this past year.

I’ve written earlier about losses you don’t know you’re going to grieve until you come upon them.  This year was full of them.  NOT driving.  NOT visiting colleges.  NOT taking the ACT.  NOT being a part of the school musical.  NOT taking senior pictures.  NOT going to Gala.  NOT having a posse.  NOT being invited to events at which all her other handful of few and far between friends were present. Intentionally. Repeatedly.

You don’t know how much you can ache inside until your 17-year-old starts waking you up in the middle of the night sobbing as she comes to grips with what seems like the senseless slaughter of one dream after another after another after another.   An ache that is only surpassed by the sickening, repetitive blows to your gut—you cannot fix this.  You cannot fix this.  YOU. CANNOT. FIX. THIS.

And I’m only talking about my daughter’s loss.  Because you all know, if you live in the grips of something that won’t let go no matter how hard you try to shake it loose, that I’ve got my own losses, as well.

It is what we all know to be TRUE, even if we’ve often been encouraged not to feel it—when you live with pain that then causes you to live with limits, you ultimately end up living with loss, as well.

And we must be allowed—no, even encouraged—to pick up our pen, in the spirit of God’s dearest David, and let it walk us through our own psalm of lament.

BUT.

We must also remember no psalm is complete without doxology.  

If we’re going to follow in David’s footsteps, we must follow him all the way through the pit and not stop and languish there but continue to follow him as he is raised up, again, to the Solid Rock.  To the Rock that is Higher.  To his Firm and Strong Foundation.

It is only in this way that both our sorrow is transformed and we are forever transformed by our sorrow.

There are things that have been lost.  In my life.  In my daughter’s.

In your own.

And it’s okay to be sad about that.

It’s normal to be sad about that.

It’s called grief.

And it is the first real step on our pathway forward.

acceptance doxology grief lament loss psalms sorrow transformation