Grieving With Your Heart

If I am going to be honest, I’ve had a bad week, a sad week, a week that makes you want to climb back in bed, draw the shades and forget the world exists.  And you would think that my state of sadness would come from my own grief but it hasn’t, it has come from my very best friend.  He is missing his son.  He spoke it to me a couple of nights ago in our daily after work conversation.  The speaking of it brings me to my knees in pain for him, not because I don’t have my own deep missing but because he is suffering with something I am so well acquainted with.  His heart is breaking and I know how every fractured piece feels.  Emotionally, I am on the floor in a puddle when he says it and rendered useless to help him except to say “I am so sorry, I know how you feel, I miss him too.”

I love my husband, I respect him and he is the love of my life but before we get to crazy here this is a hard-fought for love! No princess fairy tale stuff went on during the making of this marriage.  My marriage has been a death sentence, death to self mostly.  I am a strong-headed woman and Jason is an even stronger leader.  I have hated him at times with a complete abandon and loved him more times the same, but I have never loved him they way I love him now.

Laying  to rest our son together and sharing in that heartbreak has truly made us friends.  There is no person on the face of the earth that knows how I feel more than him.  He needs no explanation for a bad day or instant tears he already knows.  Harsh or foolish words are easily forgotten between us now because everything suffered is held up to the light of what we have endured and it blesses me.  I know that takes a lot of guts or something else to say but I am truly blessed with this gift of grief and I am truly blessed to grieve with him.

Being blessed does not diminish the tragic torture of it all.  When people say to me ” I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.”  I kind of have to agree with them, I mean I can’t imagine what I am going through, its brutal!  Grief is a club we don’t want to belong to, nobody signs up for a course on suffering.  “Um, Hi Yes I am interested in having my heart smashed into a thousand pieces, do you have any idea where I sign up?” Said no one ever!!! But to the child of God who suffers rightly, oh the Glory and faith that abounds.  I praise God that I have not had to endure any of this alone, but I especially thank God that I haven’t had to do it with out Jason.

My heart is overwhelmed with sadness when I think about possibly having to be without him someday,  who will know of my very distinct pain and who will comfort me…..and then I am reminded of my faith,  of my God and his promises.  I have a Savior well acquainted with grief and every heartache I have ever felt even the ones he has caused.  I have a Savior who is near to the brokenhearted and a Savior that has been broken.  He calls me beloved even when I am foul and he will never leave me, his suffering with me is long.  I have a Spirit who is a heavenly comforter and I am never alone.

Does my gift of faith diminish the pain of my great loss?  No and I wouldn’t want it to but it reminds me that I am eternal, the longing for joy is constant and God is good!