As I shared recently, grief swung back around, this time wooing me with sentimental thoughts of Cole coming home. I wasn’t trying to imagine this alternate reality. It just entered my mind one day and kept playing its reel so earnestly, it felt plausible and true, this disguised fantasy. So I didn’t try to turn it off, but lingered there, on those sweet thoughts, letting them touch my heart with their warm breath. When I dreamed one morning of Cole exiting an SUV in front of our house, fresh from the Navy with suitcase in hand, I left my eyes closed after waking, savoring the image, letting it be true for that moment. And I called it back to mind a few times later that day, cradling and caressing the sight of my boy standing before me, happy to be home.
No one would blame me, I think, for indulging myself in these moments. Losing a child is a kind of suffering that deserves some comfort, if only fleeting, it would seem. But what I have found is that false comfort only makes the reality harder. There have been some ugly cries lately because, as sweet as these thoughts have been, the truth is that Cole is not coming home. He already went home and I’m the one who will be showing up there with suitcase in hand someday.
So what is to be done now? I could easily spend the rest of my life trying to stay connected to Cole through this sweet sadness of memories and grief. But at some point that tie, which feels so temporarily warm and comforting, is bound to become distorted, as always happens when we cling to love rather than loose it. It will, I imagine, reduce Cole to an idea of a person; a stagnant character in the story of me, and diminish the parts of my life that don’t touch his, denying both of us permission to develop and become outside of each other.
At the heart of it, I am once again seeing my will. I want things to be a certain way; for my son to be alive and with me here. I had expectations that would be the case; that God would intervene in Cole’s darkness in that way. It’s not wrong to have prayed for, hoped and expected his freedom here, and it’s certainly not wrong to be sad for my loss. But the tension, the prolonged torment that arises, is not from the very natural process of grief, but from my resistance to surrender my ideas of what should be; what I want to be true; my disappointment and failed expectations, in ruthless trust to my Father who sees my struggle, holds my tender heart in His hands and beckons me forward into a future that it is not defined by outdated desires or by grief.
But surrender is a choice. One I’ve made before, and one I’ll have to make again. I know that peace will follow; it always does. So I will wrestle down my will until I can hand it over freely, a sacred gift that only I can give. And then, like a child whose tantrumed tears dry, whose anguish subsides, whose relationship is restored to sweet order once yielded, I will curl up on my Daddy’s lap and humbly receive His love. It doesn’t mean I will fully understand or see the whole picture, but I will trust that He does, that He is for me, that He has my best at heart. He will speak over me and help me see the good things ahead as hope rises again and we laugh together.
For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. Isaiah 43:19
Walls that for a lifetime have kept love outside for fear that it didn’t belong inside; they are crumbling. How could they stand here, in this sacred embrace of vulnerability met with overpowering grace? It has brought me to my knees. But there is no place I’d rather be.
I have been in a wildly distracted place. My phone has been in hand first thing in the morning as though an inbox of immaterial emails can’t wait until my heart has had a chance to orient itself to a new day and the One who created it, and then dozens of times throughout the day as thoughts fly immediately from my mind to my iphone’s keyboard. Some of the things I consider most important have taken a backseat to what will gratify in the moment, not unlike a cheap sugar fix that will leave me unsatisfied and craving more. It’s not that I haven’t been accomplishing good things too. I have. But sometimes good things can be accomplished out of order or serve as a distraction themselves, leaving a lack of internal rest and a mind that can’t be still.
The downside is that my thought life can also be very self-focused. It’s where all those measuring sticks live with their nagging doubts about my ability to meet their standards, making me feel like a perpetual child whose head never reaches the height mark for the rides I most want to go on. But instead of height, it is: 1) Beauty – something that has always felt so important and yet out of reach. I would settle for “decent” with the ability to dress it up well, but that’s never been my thing. And, 2) Success. By this, I don’t mean a winning career with a cushy salary and fine things; those have never interested me. But the idea that there’s something I’m good enough at to hold up and say, “See, I’m good at this so I have worth,” preferably in a form others can recognize. I’d probably settled for decent here too, with the ability to dress it up a little. But that’s never been my thing either.
where waves grow sweet 