On July 13th, 2022, a new door was opened to me. I had no choice but to walk through it. Each one of us has chambers opened to us that we would never have chosen to enter. But I have discovered a truth that shines in the darkness as a brilliant light. God himself is with us in those dark places, and he will make goodness come out of what Satan meant for evil.
As I entered this dark room, as it were, I looked around me, like a frightened, bewildered child. Trying to make sense of where I was, my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and I realized that I was not alone.
He was there with me. In all his divinity. And humanity.
It was as if, in the chaos and violence of grief, Jesus led me into a safe harbor, a refuge from the storm. There was still pain there. Immense and crushing. But it was a place of safety where he tended my wounds and sustained me with his words. He was the bread that kept me alive.
And I began to write.
It happened soon after Caleb ran ahead to heaven. At the funeral, I shared what it was like to know Caleb; to be his mom, to walk with him through the highs and lows. Through those first months, I began to record the pain of grief and the joy of knowing this sweet boy of mine. And the words flowed out of me.
Along with the sharpness of grief, came an acute knowledge that our time on this earth is fragile, the distance between what is and what shall be, being the briefest of moments. For a period of time, I saw clearly that life with all its’ coming and goings is, as Solomon says, “meaningless.” I thought about all the hundreds of ways we go about our days, ignoring our mortality, taking for granted that we will live till a ripe old age, see our children marry and hold our grandchildren. And there developed in me the most intense of desires to use the time I have left to know more of God, and to glorify him; to give him my brokenness, and let him reshape it, mold it, and turn it into something beautiful for him.
It came easier to me when the curse weighed heavy on me; when the darkness threatened to wipe me out.
The burden of loosing a child was so heavy, I thought it would crush me. I couldn’t bear to think that it would not always be this way. In a strange way, I felt closer to Caleb in the darkness of grief, during that time. But I have since learned that none of us would be able to survive that kind of intensity for a sustained period of time. It would destroy us. As a dear fellow bereaved momma said, “The intensity has to lessen, or we’ll succumb. But the grief…it is a holy thing.”
A holy thing. The words echoed through my heart.
My dictionary says that “holy” is “something dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose.”
Even our grief can be given to God, and used by him, for his purpose.
Oh, dear God! Use my aching broken heart for your kingdom. Give it purpose. Use the story of Caleb’s life to accomplish something sweet in the heart of someone else for you. Use the story of your faithfulness to me in the darkness to encourage another traveler through the valley.
That first year, the words flowed easy, like rushing water, newly melted on the mountain heights.
But with the tempering of my grief, there have been times when the words dried up like a desert stream. And there are moments in the silence, when I have heard the whisper of a heart still under the curse…
“Your grief has no purpose. Your words mean nothing. Your experience is no different than the thousands of others who have gone through the same thing. They can express it so much better. You have nothing new to say.”
Then I read something George Macdonald once wrote.
“As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father. And for each God has a different response. With every man he has a secret—the secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter . . . a chamber into which no brother, nay, no sister can come. From this it follows that there is a chamber also—(O God, humble and accept my speech)—a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man—out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made—to reveal the secret things of the Father.”
And I realized… we all have a story to tell; a story of the faithfulness of God that is particular to us.
So, with broken words and stuttering heart, I will declare what I have seen in the darkness. It’s the story of a door that was opened, and the God who led me through and has never left my side. It’s the story of the new name.