Mysterious Blessings

 My eyes focus on the words as if they are my only life-ticket to understanding the heaviness I feel. Grief can up-end a person's world like nothing else. The tightness in the chest, the speeding of the heart-rate, the unexpected moments of weeping, the constant heaviness of spirit, the desire to be alone yet also the desire to be with someone, the inability to tolerate light chatter and the longing for quiet, deep conversation of real substance... I've felt all of these in recent days as I have clung in the midst of my sorrow to a good God who has yet to reveal some hidden mercy in this sadness. 

Just two weeks ago, the news came crashing into my world with no warning. A loss so unanticipated I feel I've yet to recover from the shock. Have yet to accept it as reality because a part of me thinks that he'll be back and it'll all go on as before. But my friend is gone. Has been for sometime, and I'm left trying to still make sense of it all while yet experiencing a peace I can't fully comprehend. 

And while I try to process it all, it seems the rest of the world is going on without a care. That life is swirling around me, and I'm standing still. Trying to compartmentalize my pain so that I can still function and attempt to move on. Trying to figure out how to be honest when others ask how I am - feeling like I can't lie and say "I'm fine" when I'm not but also not wanting to burden them with the seemingly endless list of sad things I've experienced in recent months. With the fact that I am grieving the goodbye of someone I deeply cared about. But somehow, I feel like my face betrays me. Those who really know me can tell I'm not all there. They can see the sadness. They can hear the pain in my voice. And those who have sat with me in these ashes of loss are showing me a love I can't turn away from in my sorrow. And I'm fighting my pride in order to let people in - to let them see all of me and not just the part I'd like them to see. To release the control of needing to always put my best foot forward and, instead, being willing to be honest and vulnerable about the way it really is. And each time I do that, I'm gaining the strength to be a bit more open, a bit more real. 

And now I notice this...

"Blessed are those who mourn..." (Matt. 5:5). 

There it is. Even the sorrow comes with a blessing. And I wonder if perhaps my struggle to welcome the pain the same as to welcome the joy is because I forget that those who mourn, those who hurt, those who struggle are enabled to see the blessing of God in their midst in ways not readily seen when life is good. Only pain can open your eyes to the real ways God moves because faith must choose to believe that He is all that He says He is when your circumstances are telling you to deny Him and run away. 

Hardship precedes abundance. And I'm once again bringing myself back to the fact that no new thing can spring forth unless something dies. And perhaps my heart can't continue to be recaptured unless God breaks it from time to time. Perhaps I cannot love rightly or thank fully if I do not lose. Perhaps I cannot embrace a new beginning if certain things do not end. 

So often in recent months, I've asked God to please let me get off this ride I didn't ask to be on. To let the string of bad news stop for awhile. To let the good times roll again so that these hard days are only a distant memory. But God hasn't answered that prayer. He continues to allow more bad health diagnosis, more endings, more farewells, more sufferings, more of everything I do not want. And now, I'm facing the hardest loss of them all and having to choose (more so than at any other time) to believe that God has not left and that He is still good and I am still loved. Maybe my prayer to be removed from this struggle was actually a wrong one, and He is merciful to not grant me what I want.  Rather, He's asked me of late to go back and re-visit the old waste places of my soul and help me realize there's so much I've yet to yield to Him from my past. At times, I've been ashamed of my story and have held back from letting God fully use it for His glory. And only a season of sorrow that has ground me emotionally to practically nothing could have exposed this falsity so clearly.

I have pondered 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 quite often in the last several months, and I'm finding greater meaning to my past within it's words. Paul points out that the adversity He requested God to remove was actually a secret agent of Grace to help keep him from becoming proud. That his weakness was a more complete avenue for God's power and grace to be manifested in his life than if God had removed the suffering Paul endured. And that, the proper response to this answer from the Lord was to speak all the more openly about his struggles and to even find contentment in his hardships, weaknesses, calamities, persecutions, and insults provided Christ was more fully put on display. 

All these years I've done it wrong by asking God to take away the circumstances I do not like. In doing so, I've robbed Him of an opportunity to work in and through me in a deeper way. I've robbed others of the chance for my story to make an impact in their life. And I've robbed myself of the chance to let God use me in greater capacities. In choosing to run, I've been blind to the mysterious blessing of suffering. And now it's led me to hide things I should have spoken openly about and trusted God to do something beautiful with them, however hard. I need the Gospel to show me a new way to live. A new way to trust. A new way to believe. A new way to hope. 

A dear friend of mine lost her son while serving with the Army in Iraq twelve years ago. While talking with her recently, she gave me some advice on how to see through to Jesus in this dark place of sadness. She told me that what has carried her in the years since he died has been the simple fact that, in his absence, she has gotten to experience the "what happens after." To discover the hope of God's redeeming grace out of tragedy in ways that have blown her mind on more than one occasion. She encouraged me to look for the same. To see that this is now my opportunity to discover "what happens after" and to witness how God takes all this and turns it into good. And so I wait. And so I watch. 

Those who grieve, who mourn, are blessed. And just maybe this place I find myself in is the best place to be? Because, in this time of searching for answers, of praying to God for peace and comfort, of relying so completely on God's ability to sustain - perhaps I am re-discovering the grace of my Lord in a way that only suffering can teach me to. If this is true, then gladly may I walk through the valleys of heartache. Gladly may I endure the difficult days of sorrow and suffering provided He turns all this into something glorious for Him.