There is pain in this world that words can’t touch. First world, third world, political, cultural – it slapped me in the face this morning.
A fellow photographer lost her almost-three-year old this week. A friend got verbally abused on Facebook for posting a quote from someone’s speech. Another friend shared her experience with extreme pain in Sri Lanka. I searched in vain for words, aching over this real life that picks people up and throws them back down without so much as a by-your-leave.
As I climbed into the shower, I realized it’s not the dead ones I’m sad for. It’s the ones who are left – you, me, the mama with the empty arms where her little girl used to be. When you love somebody and they aren’t in your world anymore, it makes a hole in your heart that never, ever heals.
When real life is only dust and ashes, why – HOW – do we go on? How do we get up in the morning and keep living the lives we lived before?
No matter how much good I have in my life, I wrestle against God allowing so much pain in the world. And as I’ve wrestled, unable to hate Him because He is good, I have been realizing that all of life is really a life-and-death thing, not a goods-and-no-goods thing. Being alive isn’t just about breathing – it is is about making choices: to love or to hate, to embrace or to reject, to open our hearts or to build up walls.
First world or third world, real life is about these choices, not just about survival. This is what it means to be human, wherever we are. It’s easy for me to “have a life” in America, unlike it is for many in third world countries, but death isn’t easier here because I have “wealth.” It isn’t less overwhelming there because they’re more used to it.
For all the beauty I seek out and share, I can’t thwart death, and that feels like the ultimate defeat.
But when Jesus said “he who loses his life for My sake will find it,” He wasn’t merely talking about martyrdom. This Man who never took a political or cultural stand was talking about living every day with your heart broken for those you love. He didn’t shut pain down or shut people out to ensure His survival and keep His heart intact.
I live in this world, for richer or for poorer, caught in an exquisite middle that keeps me alive to love and to loss. The suffering of Christ to which I am called is the pain of loss that comes with loving real and loving deep.
The water ran hot over my skin with the sound of the song I’d left playing on my iPhone: “He is good, He is good, His love endures forever.” I reached for Him who means the most to me, and He spoke comfort I’d read over but never really acknowledged: “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
Somehow, He must be enough to go on until every tear is wiped from our eyes.
For Jill Thomas, whose mother-arms are empty today.
FILED UNDER: God and Me, Life, Personal
Heart breaking. I will be praying for your friend.
Achingly real and beautiful, Kelly. Yes, this is the cost of living – and it’s huge: the painful reality of death, weaving its way all through the beauty. The empty arms, the overwhelming-ness of the loss – it’s impossible. It truly is. So often, we Christians whip out the words of comfort or reassurance way too soon. We’ve got to sit in the lament for a while. To let the pain percolate and steep in us and in all who suffer. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard Paul’s words mis-applied, mis-used: “God will never give you more than you can bear.” Bull-crap. We get more than we can bear on a regular basis! That verse is about temptation – not about the sufferings of this life. Of course we cannot bear it. We aren’t designed to bear it. We are meant for LIFE – and the only way through the pain and agony of loss and death is straight through the cross to the empty tomb and the heart of a Savior who shed real blood for us, so that we might live. Even when the burden is way too much for us. Way too much. Even.Then.
So very beautiful. It is hard to live in this sin-scraped world. I think He designed it that way so that we would never be at home here. Love this!
Kelly ~ beautiful words. so much truth. I’m glad I read them this evening.
“He spoke comfort I’d read over but never really acknowledged: “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” Love. ~Chris Ann