A Time to Mourn

It is no mistake that we have been studying James 1 so recently in our small group.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything...Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him" (v. 2-4, 12).

Today was a trial for me. I left the house this morning with hope; I returned with grief. Another life lost.

Driving home, as I felt the pangs welling up in my heart, I pondered the delicate balance of this grief with the foundational knowledge of God's sovereignty. So foundational--and glorious, and life-giving!--it is to me, that I rather surprised myself at having any measure of grief at all. Indeed, through my tears, I felt the heavy burden of Humanity--the humanity that desperately clings to such grief like tar from the pits of Hell--and how I hated it.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

How I long to shuffle off this mortal coil, to leave behind the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to...Indeed, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. This world is not my home. I mourn my loss, but I mourn too, and most of all, the birth of sin in this world. For sin gives birth to death, and we were not made for death.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Naturally in my mourning, I was driven to the Book of Job, and it was only thereafter that I really knew what sobbing was. I cried, not out of grief but out of a desire to offer my Lord the right response to my grief from this trial.

Job 1:21 holds the most beautiful summation of the right balance for which I had been searching. Messenger upon messenger (four messengers!) ran in to Job to tell of his immense losses--and what was Job's reaction? Verse 20 says:

Then Job arose
and tore his robe
and shaved his head,
and he fell to the ground
and worshiped.

Yes, Job grieved, but in the midst of his sorrow he also worshiped. He worshiped! As my eyes fell on this word in the text, I broke down. In my grief I want, more than anything, to worship, just as Job did. For "through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God" (v. 22).

"The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" (v. 21).

And I dwelt all day on the character of my Lord. His goodness. His perfect love for me. And my mourning--once again--has turned to dancing. It may be that I will endure this trial many times before I am made "mature and complete, not lacking anything." But I will endure. That endurance has nothing to do with me...it is faith given from and for a God who does not change like shifting shadows, a God who gives good and perfect gifts to His children, a God who makes everything beautiful in its time.

How Can I Keep from Singing?

There is an endless song
Echoes in my soul
I hear the music ring

And though the storms may come
I am holding on
To the rock I cling

How can I keep from singing Your praise?
How can I ever say enough?
How amazing is Your love!
How can I keep from shouting Your name?
I know I am loved by the King
And it makes my heart want to sing

I will lift my eyes
In the darkest night
For I know my Savior lives

And I will walk with You
Knowing You'll see me through
And sing the songs You give

I can sing in the troubled times
SIng when I win
I can sing when I lose my step
And fall down again
I can sing 'cause You pick me up
SIng 'cause You're there
I can sing 'cause You hear me, Lord
When I call to You in prayer
I can sing with my last breath
Sing for I know
That I'll sing with the angels
And the saints around the throne

(from Chris Tomlin, See the Morning, 2006)

In the Secret Place

In the secret
In the quiet place
In the stillness
You are there

In the secret
In the quiet hour I wait
Because I want to know you more

I want to know you
I want to hear your voice
I want to know you more
I want to touch you
I want to see your face
I want to know you more

I am reaching for the highest goal
That I might receive the prize
Pressing onward
Pushing every hindrance aside
Out of my way
Cause I want to know you more

This is a famous praise song. We sing it as impassioned believers longing to see the face of our great God--the very face that caused Isaiah to cry out, "Woe to me! I am ruined!" For God sees us as we truly are, and to see God is to see that truth, the truth of our utter wretchedness and filth. But the degree to which we are unclean does not even compare with the degree to which God is holy and glorious, our very light and life. So we do long to see His face, for we are able to stand before Him in confidence if we are covered by Christ's atoning blood--praise Him!

...But that lovely thought is not even what I really want to say here today. What I really want to say is that this song is a song of simplicity; it demonstrates the beauty of waiting and the difficult work that goes with it: pressing on while being still. Moreover, not even merely "pressing on," but pressing on with abandon! We rid ourselves of every (even minor) hindrance, all for the purpose of maintaining stillness before a very big and slumberless God.

Lord, still my spirit to soak in Your presence, to learn Your holiness...

Writing this alone in the middle of the night--this is my "quiet hour." The tick of the clock and the refrigerator's hum are the heartbeat and rush of blood in this womb of mine. This is where I thrive.

And I now return to what engendered this post in the first place:
I've lately been thinking on wombs. Is there any other place so secret? We may well say that God does His best miracles there--so small a bundle of cells inside, carrying all the metaphors of the world upon its not-yet-literal shoulders.

In the secret, in the quiet place, in the stillness, You are there...

God creates in the womb a tiny life that needs to be known--needs quite desperately to be heard, touched, seen. A baby that needs his mommy and daddy. Oh, what a helplessness to develop! Yet develop it does, and in God's time, the baby is known by her mommy and daddy, all the while known by her creator, whether she comes to know that or not.

**

Sometimes it helps to think of God as the one waiting. He is singing softly, "In the secret, in the quiet hour I wait, because I want to know you more." (This is not an entirely accurate description, but as I said, sometimes it helps to think this way a bit.) At some point in the beginning, God did want intimacy with His creation but the Fall barred that option.

He created a system of sacrifice--nope, still too far away.

He sent Jesus, the God-man--"pushed every hindrance aside" to make a way for man to be reunited with Him.

But even after God came close enough to man for us to hear, touch, and see Him in the person of the Christ, God didn't stop there; He then sent His Spirit that delves even deeper than the physical senses. The Spirit helps us in our weakness (Rom. 8) and intercedes for us in accordance with God's will. God the Spirit is the umbilical cord that connects us to God the Father, nurturing and sustaining us all the while.

I am ever more thankful for that Spirit. He is peace. We recently lost a baby, three or four weeks along. Yet out of nothing that is from me, I am filled with peace, with hope and faith and love. T.S. Eliot says it best:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Praise be to the God from whom no secret is kept. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account, and when the Spirit testifies for us--there is light, there is dancing.

So I am still waiting; and waiting, still. In that stillness, there is dancing.

Oh, the dancing!

The Mystery of the Moment

In January I received a letter from a friend, one of my past English professors, indicating that his mother had passed away a few months prior. The letter certainly choked me up, so poetic and honest it was, and I am certain I would have bawled like a baby upon reading it, had I been reading it to myself and in a less-public place.
I did not know the deceased; that was not the reason for the emotion. I certainly felt sympathy for my dear professor, but I also felt that the planets had suddenly aligned (so to speak), for my soul read in that letter so much of what I had been feeling for the last five years or more yet couldn't vocalize. Indeed, his letter was the catalyst in my writing down the thoughts that have been swirling around in my mind, slowly taking shape over the last too-many years. The letter was completely unexpected, but completely needed. And now I am completely relieved that I can see with my eyes and read as many times as I like the emotions I've been trying to nail down for so long. And now I stand in awe of a God who orchestrates all things so perfectly--praise be to my Lord!
Those once-elusive thoughts, then, are posted below. They are in the form of a reply letter, which I believe to be quite fitting to the topic. The letter has been adapted somewhat for posting here.

Dear Dr. ----,

How honored C and I felt by receiving your letter, and honored even more that you consider us worthy of your dear mother’s friendship. I am truly sad we never met her, but the love and respect she has engendered in you does emanate, almost tangibly, from the words of your letter. They spoke quite deeply to my own spirit the day I read them, and now I have my own story to pass on to you.

It was, for a change, a slow-paced Saturday, and the weather was just right for a short family stroll through the neighborhood. Having checked the mailbox on the way out, we found the lovely surprise of your letter waiting for us, and I read it aloud to C on our walk.

The timing of its arrival was perfect. On Christmas Day, we had flown to Arkansas for a speedy holiday, spending about three days with C’s family in ---- and about the same with my family in ----. We had come not only to celebrate the holidays with loved ones but also to take possession of a new-to-us (and highly coveted) van. After a week in the Natural and Lone Star States, we loaded up the van and prepared for a drive to California.

My father went with us. We were happy for his company. Anticipating that our then eighteen-month-old would travel like any other toddler, we looked forward to having an extra pair of hands and eyes to ease our three-day journey. L is the only grandchild on my side, so of course Papaw himself was thoroughly excited to be of use spending time with our own little sprite.

My parents are not at all financially well-off, and with C and I becoming less so the longer I stay at home instead of work, the holiday trip was, for me at least, bittersweet—for we are not certain we will see my folks this year, and babies have the tendency to grow up far faster than either parents or grandparents would like.

So THIS—the cycle of life throughout its generations—is what I was left to ponder on our drive through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and I am still pondering it many weeks later, as I was that Saturday on which I opened your beautiful letter.

On our walk that day, L toddled a step or two ahead, as she is wont to do. As I read aloud from the letter, I could not help but think of the fact that she and I are at the beginning of the mother-child continuum, just as you are at its end. I do wonder what story our end will have, and I pray for the grace to finish well, as your own dear mother has done. The moment was a reminder, too, to be thankful for each day as it comes and to “gird up my loins” in preparation for the more obviously-significant moments in life--which are made dearer by those less so, such as our brief walk on that unassuming Saturday.

I have one grandmother still living. She has, however, been struck by Alzheimer’s disease and is nevertheless living alone in inconsequential ----, Texas, in the very house in which my mother was raised. My parents are her primary caregivers, and being rather passive people who are overworked and underpaid members of blue collar America, growing old themselves, I see them wearing down a bit more each year under the weight of the burden.

I often feel guilty for living so far from home, for not being able to share in the burden, for living a happy life that does not seem to include any of them. It is no exaggeration to say that my daughter and I are a beam of joy in their dim lives, and I try so hard to see how removing that joy for months at a time works for the good of each of them that we’ve left behind.

I do see quite clearly how it has worked for my own good…and that is part of the guilt, I suppose. Why do I get to lead this storybook life, growing through the grace of God each year, when I feel my parents’ lives wilting day by day? I know we’re all responsible for our own actions—that we each must work out our salvation in fear and trembling…but if I weren’t living here in the ---- Valley, I fear I would be much like they are. I wouldn’t know, for example: That the Church can be so much more than a Sunday morning service. That I’m a Calvinist. That multiculturalism actually does exist somewhere. That it really is possible to live in an educated society not limited to a college campus. –Not that Los Angeles County is some sunshiny, magical land (well, sunshiny maybe!), but that God’s irresistible grace has enriched me through my experiences here.

I guess that comes with burdens of its own: I think on past generations and feel heavily the need to speak such grace to them; I ponder future generations and see that the need to speak is just as great. At this stage in life, I am caught in the middle and must strive for balance as I use my resources to care for both.

But I am not selfish enough to think that every person who has ever been my age, and who ever will be, will not go through this as well. That is the mystery: somehow it pleases God to see His children endure and enjoy such things as they come.

And here is one thing from your letter that touched me—you took on a caregiver’s burden, but you didn’t see it as one; you were there for your spritely mama and soaked up her presence, retaining all that is good about her. You’ve been blessed to be with her in the final months.

And I wonder, in my own family (both as a child and a parent), if I will be able to have that same blessing. I think on the slightly morbid, like saving up for airfare to fly home when my grandmother’s end comes; like my mother or father dying in a sudden car wreck or by some other twist of fate; or like my sister and I being taken “before our time,” leaving no one to care for our mom and dad when they themselves have cycled back to a stage of dependence. I wonder, too, if my dear daughter will love me, when my own end comes, in the same way you have shown love to your mother. What’s more, will I allow her to do so? Will my mother and father allow me? And, whether or not they do, will I choose to love them to the far-reaching degree you’ve proven by your own life to be possible?

Yes, I think on these things. They are the “significant possibilities” of my life. Yet at the moment I am typing this letter, I am in contrast living an insignificant reality, curled up on the couch under a blanket, laptop aglow at 2:32 am. But, though my posture says otherwise, it is here in the wee hours of a very ordinary morning that I, again, am girding my loins for the bigger moments.

And I am thankful. For, really, though I wonder and think as I have said I do and have clearly done here, there is one thing I stalwartly resist: I do not worry. For who by worrying can add a single hour to his life?—or to that of any other. No, I do not worry; I simply resolve. I will live in the present, in the ordinary moments, with a thankful heart and a spirit attuned to my true home, longing for the day on which I am made perfect, freed from these burdens of the human condition. I will consider how the lilies grow--and one in particular, speaking grace to her in every moment I can.

And so my story is everyone’s story and no story at all. The cycle of life throughout its generations—it has been around long before me, and it will carry on long after. In my significantly trivial place on that generational spiral, I will shine my own speck of light, a beacon to few, to some, or to no one—but made to shine brighter through unexpected words from a dear friend growing dearer.

Much love,
H.D.

A few more things to add—more examples of how beautifully the Spirit weaves together the unassuming bits of our lives, masterfully orchestrating it all:

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain. But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all. You too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me.
Philippians 2:12-18

First of all, as I wrote the above letter to my friend, I quoted Scripture in several places, not knowing the references by heart. After writing it, I went back and looked them up. My last post was in December, and it was regarding Philippians 2. I feel I’ve come further as a person since then (though it was not so long ago really), but here God has me meditating within the exact same passage. Let that be a lesson to me! …What’s that verse?...A thousand years are like one day to God? Indeed, my soul is a slow-moving glacier.

Secondly, I love that that Scripture is a Pauline letter! He was writing to a new generation of believers, like a father to a son—or a mother to a daughter—to encourage them in their faith (while in chains, nonetheless!). In the same way (minus the chains), I do hope that my daughter can one day read my meager letter and be encouraged by it as well. As Paul says, not only in his presence but much more in his absence, his beloved children should obey and shine like stars in the world, holding out the word of life. And, likewise, I pray this for my child, that she rejoice in obedience to the Father, whether I am by her side or no. I hope she is encouraged by my words, just as I was encouraged by my friend’s. And there is the new cycle, not life to death, but life unto life as we mine the truths of God’s Word.

It is beautiful, simply beautiful.

Oh how I love my God.