You are not alone.
When you feel like the very foundations of your life have been shaken and you are left reeling in a world that is completely broken without your child in it, you are not alone. There is someone who understands the depths of your pain. Who knows you and sees you even when nobody else does. Most importantly, he comes near and holds us close to his own weeping heart.
On December 13th, 2022, just 5 months after Caleb’s Heaven Day, I wrote these words…
“The 12th…The day they were married 7 months ago.
The 13th…The day he ran ahead to heaven, 5 months ago.
Dec. 14th …The day he was born 24 years ago.
There is a profound heaviness and sadness in my soul.
When I think of those early days after Caleb went to heaven, I remember snippets of events, things said, things done, things I did. But one event, in particular, that will forever be burned in my memory. After we heard the news, following the shock, the pain hit like a tsunami wave to my soul, knocking me off balance, causing me to experience the falling in space and time, flailing about for something firm to grasp onto. I remember taking a walk into the woods with my walking stick, not caring at all what happened to me, crying, weeping, flailing about, yelling, waving my stick at the air all around me. Then, lying in a broken heap on the woodland floor, in the rain. Like a child, completely in shock and pain, I screamed out to the expanse,
“Why?!”
Rather than giving me an answer, He gave me a picture. I saw myself there on the ground; empty, broken, confused, and in pain. But instead of being far off, as if to test me, or near, to hold me to account, I saw and felt a God who, in His compassion, drew so very near. Who held me as I wept. One who not only saw my pain but felt it.
And He just held me while I writhed.
Sunday, our pastor spoke about the weariness that comes from our suffering; about an extreme example of this in the story of Job, who had EVERYTHING taken away from him by Satan, in one day. He spoke about a joy that can come as a result of suffering, as it is sometimes there to drive us into relationship with God.
At the end of the book of Job in the Bible, he says…”I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” (Job 42:5)
A quote from the Lord of the Rings keeps coming into my head…
“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I wish that Caleb had never died. I wish this suffering had never come to us. But that is not for me to decide. What is left is the fact that we must walk this road. God is good, not because he keeps suffering from happening to us, but because He is with us in that suffering, because He even works good through that suffering. Because He came into this broken world to rescue those who would believe on His name, that we might have hope beyond the grave.
Yes. I feel the profound weight of a grief that will always be there. But more than that. There is hope. A confidence that I will one day see Caleb again…He had settled things with God. He was ready to die.
There are even glimpses of hope, shining through the rain. Hints that God will always be enough for me. My soul grieves for my son that I lost, but as I gaze at Jesus, Oh God, teach my heart to say…”It is well with my soul.”