I finally found a place where I feel at home. My sorrow and longing blend into the wallpaper. I could cry, or be still as a statue, or simply stare out of the window for hours and it would all go unnoticed as part of the landscape. I would belong.
We were here to support some friends who lost their grandmother. But before the funeral began there was time to gaze out of the funeral home window at the rows and rows of headstones. I realized that nobody would give me a second glance if I burst into tears or sat down from weakness. This was the house where grief lives. I could probably stay here forever until my family missed dinner. “Where’s mom?”
.
You know what’s hard about being nearly three years in? I can laugh with friends but feel like a grief house on the inside. I can help with a women’s retreat, eat birthday cake, and still carry a scream simultaneously.
.
I guess that makes me more like Jesus. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” but he attended weddings, and dinner parties, and taught the Word of God. All while carrying the greatest burden because He knew the curse that held mankind hostage.
.
I wonder if part of his sorrow and grief were expressed while He was away praying on the mountain top. I wonder if He ever simply sat and stared and felt the weight of the cursed earth that He was there to redeem.
.
On the cross He gave voice to our sorrow by crying out with a loud voice , “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” I don’t know why they say “cried out with a loud voice”. I think it softens the truth. Crying out with a loud voice is screaming. Jesus screamed, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me” and, “Father, into Your hands I entrust My spirit.” He carried that scream His whole life and still trusted God for the 33 years ordained for Him.
.
I don’t have to be at a funeral home to feel like I belong. I belong to Jesus and He summed up my life with those two lines, “Why have You forsaken me?” and “Into Your hands I commit my spirit”. It’s possible to feel forsaken and have total trust in God all at the same time.
And, it’s okay to scream.
.
Dear Lord, You got to scream, “It is finished!” I wish I could scream that, too. I don’t know when all of this will be done. All I can do is trust the One who made me. The One who made Tristan, and keep living until we can be together again. Please save me from myself. In Jesus name, Amen.
