We often say, "I'll never be the same", after a life-changing and altering happening. As much as it hurts and we'd like it to be what we always knew it as, grief, pain, broken stories, redemption leave their mark and in all honesty should not leave us the same.
We are deepened by grief's awareness. We know more deeply the carrying of both grief and joy. We know firsthand the ache of loss because we knew the joy of loving the one we lost or what has been lost or changed.
Grief, death, pain is because we knew love and connection and had the privilege and joy of loving someone and wholeness. It's also once knowing health and now being very much aware of the diagnosis and sometimes the daily carrying of shards of broken health.
To learn to know who Jesus is for us in these moments, is to choose to yoke together with Him and learn of Him in deeper ways.
To know grief is to have the opportunity to know the comfort of Jesus.
To know loss is to have the opportunity to see things with more clarity.
To be weak is to choose to know God's strength.
To have experienced brokenness is the opportunity to know God's healing and tender touch.
To know grief is to be enlarged by it as we learn to know more of who God is in the middle of it.
I've been enlarged by grief, health issues, and mental darkness and I don't ever want lose what I've learned and to not be deepened by the lessons I've learned within it and learning to who Jesus is. Matthew 11:28, Come to Me - and learn of Me and you will find rest for your souls.
In learning who Jesus is we find rest. Proverbs 18:10 tells us, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe." Not safe as in all blue skies and no harm, but a refuge and place to dwell and to find rest.
Being deepened by loss, grief, and pain is an awareness that leaves us changed. It's a hard truth and a mysterious one. It's a deepening awareness that changes our thought processes, beliefs, and even friendships and connections. We are changed because of knowing Jesus more fully within it. In a hard and mysterious way, it is with reverence we carry and hold the change. It's the scars that tell us what we've borne, carried, loved, and yet have no more. It's the scars that tell us of what is while holding the awareness of what once was or what we had envisioned to be different.
I would not have chosen my hard path but I am grateful for who I've become through it all. When we surrender what is, what was lost, and the unfulfilled desires to God, we have space to find new joys and a freedom within our story.
As the caterpillar surrenders to the process it becomes a butterfly. As we surrender to the process of pain and joy, the both/and of life to God, we are changed and a deepened awareness of who we are and who God is takes place. We find our wings. We find the space and freedom to fly.
I carry my story and scars with reflective honour and give thanks for the deepening it has done in my heart. The same can be true for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment