Grief's Anguished Cry

 

Life is filled with daily miracles, joys that thrill our hearts and gifts to look for and to be grateful.  But the reality is that there are also those moments that forever change our course, happenings that blindside us and send us reeling. There is sickness, it's-not-supposed-to-be-this way scenarios, rejections, etc.  These moments leave us with a cry, a deep, heart-rending cry that ascends upward and into our Father's presence.

Jesus knows all about this.  He too, uttered a heart-rending cry that ascended up, up to His Father.

These cries come from deep within our souls and leave us gasping for air and searching for a footing, a place to ground our flailing emotions and land.  Sometimes it seems these cries go no further than the ceiling and other times they seem to connect with our Father.

Jesus knows such a moment.   A moment of 'where are you,God?'. A moment of silence, alone in grief, carrying a load all alone. 

He cried, "My God, my God, why did You forsake me?"

To me, this is one of the most heart wrenching moments when such a deep cry is left loose and goes up, upwards toward the Father. 

Scripture doesn't tell us God turned His face  away. It doesn't say He deserted His Son, but Jesus felt it, His cry echoes and our sometimes matches it. And sometimes it's as if our cry is only to be met with what feels like God turning His face away. 

Alone. Alone.

Why??  

As I sat with that, wrestling with a moment in my fifth grade year at school, wondering where was God in that moment, a moment that left its mark deeply embedded in my soul and I thought of the moment Jesus had on the cross.

I have often heard that this moment of being forsaken, a seemingly turning from His Son, Jesus, as He hung on the cross, was because of sin.

I wrestle with that and questioned it's validity as I thought of my day in school.  If God turned His face away, forsaking Jesus because He couldn't tolerate sin, would He have not done that me and to the many sacrifices that the children of Israel offered over the years?  Would He still not turn away from my sin and yours?

As I thought of Jesus seeing me that day, watching what was happening and knowing what it would do to my soul and what I would do with it for many years following, my question was/is, "How could He stand and watch it?"  "Why doesn't He intervene?"

There were a couple of thoughts that came to me... One is that hard, heartbreak, and sin is the natural consequence of choosing the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Two, Jesus wants to redeem all things and sometimes the hardest situations are where we find Him the deepest and experience the deepest redemption.  But He can't stand to watch it happen, so it's as if He turns His face away. He doesn't intervene, but He doesn't leave. He stays because He knows and sees all things and desperatelylongs for vus to find Him in deeply redemptive ways. 

Jesus, hanging on the cross, in deep physical pain, had prayed hours before that this cup would pass from Him, this walking out a deeply hard path.  His heart-rending cry was left unanswered but it's result would be the last sacrifice needed for eternal redemption. It was a needed hard for an ultimate good, but it was also so hard for God to not intervene and I can only imagine, not to rescue Jesus. To rescue Jesus would have left us deserted.

Sometimes the best and good can only be by walking the path of hard hard.

I don't have many words for this or able to explain it, but I do know that out of my deep, deep unanswered cries and wondering where God was, I have found Him very deeply and personally, that I can see it all as a gift.  And I really wonder if that is why God sometimes seems to turn His face away and to us it seems like He doesn't care, when really, He cares oh so deeply.  It's a risk He takes because we may choose to allow it to turn our hearts away from Him instead of toward Him for redemption.

This Easter season, this remembering of His sacrifice, remember it is for our own redemption, initally when we choose to believe Him and accept His salvation, but also on-going, redeeming our hearts through each and every hard we experience and walk through.

Nothing happens that He can't redeem.  He wants our hearts.  Just like it was before the reaching and eating off the one tree Adam and Eve were told not too. Before the bite they walked with God.

God wants us to walk with Him and discover Him to be sufficient strength. To find Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. To let His love go deep in our souls, redeeming all things. 

God promised a Saviour the moment they took and ate the fruit. Jesus fulfilled that promise and I am deeply grateful for His redemption in so many ways. 

Jesus is our Advocate, our Immanuel, and He gets our deep heart rending cries that ascend up, up and up. Stay with Him, trusting and believing that He sees and hears. The Holy Spirit interprets our groaning cries. 

Jesus, our Redeemer, our Saviour, our Friend. 

Broken, Redeemed and New

I was not happy when a cat who persistently declared my table for a perch, knocked over one of my pots. The result was, broken pieces. Then a new pot was found for the plant.

Broken.

Broken pieces.

How many times we realize that so much of what happens we didn't ask for or would ever wish for. Life has moments of being shattered.

In the age of middle school, I find myself the brunt and exclusion of relationships.  It takes its toll on my heart and I begin to believe many things about me and make my own interpretations of what is going on.

Yes, many of them were false, lies that bound my heart and mind and bent me to live in protection mode and scared to be.

That transitioned to high school and even into youth years.

Broken. In a negative and damaging way.

In a moment our lives can be altered.  It can be a phone call.  A second that forever changes what is to what was.  Discovering a secret that devastates.  The diagnosis that we never wanted to hear. Or it can even be the slow erosion of steady dripping of negativity, rejection.

Life altering.  Life changing.

Life was shattered and broken many years ago, with the first bite of the fruit that was forbidden.  Peace and beauty were marred.  Life was forever altered.

Pain, tears, shame, and a myriad of other hard entered our stories, leaving their mark.

Broken pieces are difficult.  They're difficult to accept and we grasp and wrestle for our original state.  We want life to be as was... perfect.

Broken pieces often happen as a result of someone else, something out of our control or making.  But sometimes it is our choosing, our own making.

The reality is, that this side of heaven it will never be perfect.  Perfect was forever broken this side of heaven. But God promises to redeem.  To redeem all things for good.  Yes, even the most horrific, given into the hands of our Heavenly Father, can redeem our hearts.

Redeemed.

Roadways in wildernesses.  Rivers in deserts.

Broken to be Redeemed.  

How I love that word.  All brokenness does not need to be an end in itself.  It's not meant to be.  God, from the moment that fruit eating incident happened, had a plan of redemption.

He promised Jesus.  A Saviour.  A Redeemer.

Immanuel means God with us.

God sent a piece of Himself.  Before Jesus came to earth, in Isaiah, God promises to be with us as we walk through waters or fire.

God promises to walk with us. GOD IS WITH US.

God does not keep hard or pain from us, but He promises to be with us. It's rarely around or out of a situation, but it's a way through.

The first broken hurt and I built walls and ways of coping.  But there is second breaking that needs to happen and that is, the chains of lies and walls that we build and construct in our young minds and hearts.  God wants us.  He wants our hearts and that is the greatest redemption of any hard.  Our hearts so easily attach to something other than Him, just like Eve and Adam did that one fateful day so many years ago.

We make vows and attach our hearts to things we think we can control and manage.  We need to let go and find God.  Trusting Him, is one of the biggest hurdles to accepting the hard and what we wish would be different.

Jesus is the Way.  And when we stay with Him, searching to see Him in amongst the tears and pain, we find a way through, because He is the Way.

New.

Something new.  

A new pot for my plant.

Surrender. Accepting.  These are words we don't like to hear.  May I lean in and whisper, "don't push them away..."  Accepting what is, now and finding Jesus in the ashes and rubble, is a very hard step, but oh, so important to finding life again. 

For when we find Jesus we find our way through.  Jesus really does want to make roadways in wildernesses and rivers in deserts.  There are many times where what once was cannot be put back together.  We need a new pot.

I once was told that accepting is half the battle and I have found that to be true.  As I wrestle through the pain and disappointment, the battle is to accept the reality of broken pieces.

We can stand and stare at them.  We can stomp our foot and raise our fists and shout, "This isn't fair!  I don't want this to be part of my story!"  But that won't change the reality of what lies broken at our feet.

We have two options before us.

We can sit and pout, and regale our woes to anyone who passes by or stops to ask. They may even join us and we have a swapping of stories.  We may even hurl our insults to passerbys. We can hide behind the walls or keep slinging our chains of lies we constructed because in some ways that feels safer and better than being vulnerable and letting go.  After all, I made them so they must be good?!?!

Or we can lift our hands to Jesus and give Him the shattered and broken pieces. Turning our heart's eyes to Him, allowing space for our tears and grief, and inviting Him to care for us and to redeem.  To repent of how and what we built to protect and manage us and turn to Him, trusting Him.

Most times we need to accept what is instead of always pining for what was or what we think should be, to move forward and toward our Father.

And in whatever broken you find yourself, the wrestling to deal with the pieces is never the same or a once-and-done deal.  It isn't linear or in a straight line or in a box.  It's jagged and misshapen.  And each story is unique so each path forward is unique.

God is with each of us.  Don't compare your story or journey to someone close to you.  In God's time He makes all things new.  Remade.  Reformed.  Life breathed into.

But it can't be done all the while I am resisting and hanging on to what was.  It's only as I surrender what's broken and accept the He will redeem, that I find new vision and a way to take the next step.

New pots can be found and enjoyed. (But sometimes I still want my original pot!! 😉🥴😄)

Letting go allows space for new life.  New joys, new gifts.  

And in all reality, there will still be the space of grief that will rise to the top.  But it's turning that to face our Redeemer and finding His grace and love. Finding the joys of today. 

It's the posture of two hands, one holding the sorrow, the other holding the gifts, putting them to together in prayer or lifting them up to the Father, who holds all of us in His hands.

I still get annoyed thinking about that cat, but I smile and enjoy my new planted pot.  And that's so much more fun than pining away for what was.  It's healthier too.  

(The second picture at the top is the repotted plant and I keep the broken pieces as a reminder.)