Image: Ray Brown.
Your experience of loss and grief is unique to you and God validates your pain as real and important.
Where humanity rarely treads divinity
traipses every day; in the surreal. What is painful is also holy ground.
If we have learned anything at all
about life until this point, it’s that pain has the purpose of compelling the
instructiveness of experience.
If we prepare our hearts for the pain
that will come eventually, we may endure the hardship better.
The Lord seems silent until pain
bellows into the fissures of our mortal soul. At the loneliest of times, when
we are so empty because we have accepted our weakness, and we need to remain
weak to gather God’s power, we have access to Spiritual strength. This
transcends our understanding. It can only ever be of God.
Then there are thoughts, also, for
the joy that is purposed for us to experience, in contention with the pain, the
work ahead, and the ongoing knowledge that our child will not reach a ‘normal’
human being’s potential.
We are not only healed of the painful
nuances of the loss, we are found to learn resilience and the meaning of life.
We may be overwhelmed in pain. We
might be at peace. We could be on top of our game. We might be interned in
grief. We all ebb and flow through life.
We miss the opportunities that abound
in life in the midst of sorrow. We tend to run or to resent, but to run or
resent is to miss the point, because we do not like pain. But pain is inherent
in life. God will show us, if we journey within our sorrow, making a home for
it, not pushing it away in denial or anger or bargaining, that there is only
blessing beyond the sorrow – for God is met there!
Given that hardship is the proving
ground of faith, we have the opportunity of embracing the very thing that
propels us toward maturity. But it is so tempting to take the easy route. We so
often choose pleasure over pain.
Sorrowful seasons are bruising but
bettering. As we step forth in the day of annihilation – where soul and spirit
are split asunder, with pain – we are greeted by a companion who will never let
go; who will show us who we are as he will show us who he
is.
We understand that God can use the
pain we endure; that it will further soften our hearts to the tremendous human
need we might be privileged to minister into. Preparing for an unspeakable
moment of pain intuits anxiousness, but the peace of God is a calm pond amidst
the hues of sunrise. What is felt is the truth of what’s about to take place,
but there is no pain; no undue stress. If anything I’ve been stressed because
of a different and equally important matter, and presently, I just battle to
keep up with the demands of running a household.
Love will carry us like a bridge over
the chasm of our baby’s death. God’s love is like that. It is the power to
endure much pain in the hope it will mean something one day.
All sources of fear, despair,
anguish, and grief are subject to quelling, because of the Lord. None of these
issues of pain are beyond the faculties of the grace that saves us. None of the
foreboding influence in the “waves and wind” will hold us apart from the
Presence of the Lord, manifest in the Holy Spirit.
Grief is a reality that I am
positively sure God meant for our good in this broken world of ours. I can say
this having been touched by God in grief eleven years ago, to know that in the
pain of that reality where I groaned day after day, month after month, there
was a relief that could only come from God. Such a relief was available for the
moment of reliance. Such a relief was also, ultimately, from a present-day
viewpoint, a sustainable relief.
Brokenness and neediness involve
pain. And the best ways of soothing pain toward the acceptance of brokenness
and healing is loving community.
Nothing can dissuade us from joy if
we are able to comprehend, apply and experience this truth: pain is a gift. We
never say it at the time, however.
The best way to meet pain is to
embrace it. What we cannot change must, in all wisdom, be accepted. It’s
foolishness to go against the flow and know it won’t work. Pain comes. It has
to be met.
Let the grieving person find out for
themselves that something good comes out of pain. That’s just the dignifying
thing to do.
Grief is a consequence of love lost.
When we first grieve right, entering into the hell of a time where loss is like
dying, we endure great pain, but such pain is never a waste, though it may seem
exactly like life and joy are finished.
There is no life like the life that
God gives us to see the truth, to honour it, and to embrace the painful reality
with courage.
But the processes I deliberately go
into to grieve – deliberately, because they evoke a deeper pleasure inculcated
in pain because of sorrow – are essentially sacred; they are so not of the
world and are therefore so pivotally spiritual.
We can trust grief. It is a
transforming thing; a process of renewal is under way. But we need faith to
endure moments of pain that come without warning. If we endure the moment,
negotiating it, finding we can do it, enduring the moment becomes easier.
The occurrence of sadness so thick
with meaning takes us into a cherished place of living experience. How could
anyone not want God when he shows us how wonderful the experience of sorrow is
– a sadness not without pain, but a sadness, all the same, that makes up for
the pain endured by a sense of meaning that blesses us most viscerally.
Whatever we choose to do we give
ourselves to the process of feeling all the pain we can, enrolling the fullest
surrender and release into the adhering to our anguish. Critically, we take God
in there with us. As we sob and bawl we pray. We communicate with God in
whatever way feels comfortable, knowing no mood or words are offensive to the
Lord who knows our pain.
Every human being feels pain — it is
perpetual to the human experience. Pain is a condition of life this side of
eternity.
Is there a purpose to pain, and is
there a biblical answer? It’s a “yes” to both questions.
Perhaps the only way to grow closer
to God is through such an experience of humbly accepting the pain that comes
our way. Here is part of the wonder of pain. We become inwardly shaped and
matured people through the furnace of affliction. In simple terms, we grow.
We never suffer alone. Yet, it’s only
those truly of Christ who can identify properly with and gain
from the purpose and wonder of pain — in its true and original context.
Pain, if we can accept it and embrace
it, can be the most direct route into gain.
We must go into the pain to receive
him who alone may help.
Pain is never a waste, for there is
no better teacher than pain. Her core subjects are Compassion, Kindness,
Gentleness, and Patience.
Pain may not be
necessary for growth, but pain is so often growth’s change agent.
We want to know if
there is meaning in pain; if what we suffer will have a purpose.
Faith in situations
of pain doesn’t seem anything like heroism; it’s survival.
Seasons of pain are
repetitive enough to make us sick inside. Too much déjà vu!
Déjà vu (literally,
“already seen”) is okay when it involves pleasure, but not pain.
“God won’t waste
your pain” is a cliché, because it represents a potential reality to come.
Loneliness is the
emotion we’re left with when pain visits only our person.
Pain restores the
sentiment of our sensibilities. Priorities are quickly reordered.
To talk with freedom, to walk with grace,
and to sit in our pain; these are great aids to the process for healing the
grief we experience in our losses.
We shrink from the deeper life when
the pain comes. We cannot have the heights if we are not prepared to go to the
depths. It’s just the way life is.
Hope transcends all experience of
anguish in the knowledge that God goes with us as we tread into healing by
entering into pain.
Honouring sorrow’s reality is faith.
Knowing God is healer is strength. Stepping into and through pain is courage.
Persisting with spiritual discomfort is endurance. Endurance is maturity.
Choosing joy is hope.
It comes to most at
least once in their lives... pain unrivalled in previous experience. We feel
worse than death; at least in death the pain of life is over for the person in
question.
Pain’s perspective
is hardly something accurately portrayed across the expanse of humanity. We all
experience pain so diversely given there are many variables at play.
Our pain is precious
to God, and our Lord will bring healing from within the site of our pain if we
will let him. This pain that I experience is a most precious grief
that I cannot live without, because it is the sacredness of memory that has come
to be part of me now.
Love suffers the bruising incredulity
of loss meekly by soothing the pain through acceptance. Love wishes to do a
work of acceptance in every one of us.
The requiem of our repose in loss are
tears not of overcoming pain, but of richness of experience with God’s
Presence.
We think only in
terms of our pain. God’s perspective hardly registers. God’s perspective
superintends our pain. It contains our pain. But God’s perspective is utterly
voluminous.
We learned in our
pain that very little can be done other than to be patient in the midst of
moments that cannot be reconciled.
Shining Gift of God – A Memoir of the Life of Nathanael Marcus is being launched on 13 October at
the 2018 Silent Grief Conference in Perth, Western Australia. Details for buying a copy of the book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Shining-Gift-God-Memoir-Nathanael-ebook/dp/B08BZ861BH
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