What We Want More

 If there's one thing I've learned about grief it's that it can cause you to question everything. Look back on your one precious life and wonder if you've done it right. It can throw into regret, shame, guilt, and a host of other things as memories pile up and you struggle to believe that you're letting go in peace. It can bring up past arguments and moments wasted in pointless excuses and force you to realize that you're accountable for it all. And also, that there's enough forgiveness - enough God - for it all. 

Yet, through all the reflecting, all the sorrowing... you also realize that grief can clarify. That, although you can no longer have a do-over and the past is buried with the one you've buried, you can also re-write the future - change what's to come by what you've learned from what's behind. And hope can emerge because you know that tomorrow is a new day and you can redeem the mistakes of yesterday by how you live and love and learn today. 

Grief has a way of giving you new eyes to see the world. When death has made its presence known so strongly in your life, it's like you can see yourself, God, and others in an entirely different light. Almost like it all turns to black and white. You notice things you perhaps denied or overlooked before - character flaws you tried to ignore but now seem so evident...strengths that shine through that otherwise have lain dormant...faith that rises out of despair and startles you like never before. It's all suddenly there - and you have to ask yourself, "Where do we go from here?" 

Real life is found in wrestling with the questions. In having to live with the things you don't know or to un-do the stuff you once felt so certain of. 

It's a fact that you aren't truly living unless you are doubting, asking, questioning... because belief cannot grow unless it's put to the test. And yet here we are - us Thomas's all - fighting the very doubts that can bring us to the miracle Himself. 

It's an undeniable fact that grief closes the gab between faith and always having to know the way. Because you realize there's only One who knows the way and you don't have to know the way because He does. And suddenly, it's okay to ask where to go from here because it's okay to live with the question and not have to get an answer right away. It's okay to sit in the pain and just be content to...wonder. To ask about the future while still living in the present hurt. 

To live the paradox. 

Over time, grief allows you to piece together what you want more from your life. Because, in the wake of having lost, you realize that you're now living on someone else's extra time and if you don't redeem the time and make all these days count, the dead have actually lived a greater life with less time than you did and your bonus days meant nothing. 

And so here I find myself these days... 

Living the paradox. 

Asking the questions. 

Trying to discern what I want more with the additional time I'm given. 

There are many pieces to this puzzle called life right now, and I haven't the first clue how to put them together. I see the eventual outcome but the day-to-day is more like a simple obedience in the present. A willingness to do the next right thing. And, while there are many unknowns at this time, one thing is sure: I want more God. I want more holy. More love and less judgement. More grace and less strife. More hope and less despair. More confidence and less defeat. And knowing what I want more somehow helps me to turn loose of the lesser things that only hold me back. 

Grief gave me a gift in that I brought me to an unexpected life reset. Losing one so dear as him I called "brother" and friend, caused me to empty myself of unreasonable expectations, to distance myself from toxic relationships, to begin living with better boundaries and rediscovering my self-worth. To start dreaming again and imagining bigger things for my life - to get rid of limiting beliefs and open my heart to a God who is limit-less. Without the pain of loss showing me all of this, my world would look very different. 

And perhaps that's what it comes down to for all of us: the things you're asked to let go of and goodbyes you're called to say and the heartache that comes with all endings, unexpected or not, in turn help to set us free from who we've been and enter us into who we can become. 

That the dying that occurs gives way to new life, new perspective, new hopes. 

We're all traveling unknowns roads and, while we gain glimpses of where they lead, we are reminded again and again (often painfully so!) that the journey is simply one giant surprise and only our Guide knows where we are going or how to get there. But somehow, even with the uncertainty that comes with our waking everyday, there is an expectation of also tapping into the desire birthed from our pain - of living our way into the things that once appeared so obscured. Of allowing what we thought we wanted and had taken away to push us toward what we actually discover we've wanted more all along. 

It shouldn't take a death of sorts to teach us this and maybe it's a good thing to learn to ask it before trouble forces you to: what do you want more? More than where you've convinced yourself is comfortable and safe? More than what you've settled for? More than what you've let others dictate? More than what you've repeated to yourself? 

What's bigger than that? 

Because, in the end, the lives we live will someday be the motivation point for somebody else who grieves our own passing and causes them to ask this same thing. As the years roll by, we're all finding out daily who we really want to be and where we really want to end up after it's all said and done. And that journey alone is, in my mind, worth the taking.