“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
Psalm 147:3
A few years ago, I sat on the floor as hot tears burned in my eyes. This is silly, I thought. How can this be the thing that unravels me?
A relapse had been dominating our lives for weeks: debilitating weakness, fatigue, headaches, body aches, tremors, and so much more. I sat on the couch and watched as every aspect of myself seemed to succumb to it, like falling dominoes. This disease could be relentless and unexpected at times.
It had been a long day. I pushed through the busyness of work to race home for a furnace repair. I had missed the chance to rest and recover after work, and I felt it keenly as my body shook and my head throbbed. I watched the clock while the technician finished the work, mentally calculating how many minutes I had to spare before the school bus brought my sons home. Fifteen minutes. Not enough time.
My husband had been solo parenting so much lately, I couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on another evening as a family and leaving him to parent alone. I checked the calendar. He had a late meeting! My heart raced. With careful planning, perhaps I could offer the kids a movie and buy just enough time to rest before he came home. It wasn’t ideal, but it would work. I waited anxiously for the boys to arrive from school to put my plan into action.
But only one son came home. The other had decided to stay for an after-school club at the last minute. I felt the heat rising in my body. He would need to be picked up in thirty-five minutes. There was not enough time to rest. A wave of nausea washed over me.
I reached for my phone, desperately trying to formulate a plan that would get him home safely and make space for me to recover. There was no solution.
I sat on the floor overwhelmed by emotion. I was angry, furious with my son for not coming home. I felt guilty; I wanted him to have the freedom to stay for activities in spite of my health. I was exasperated that we had needed a repair on this day of all days. I felt panicked that I had pushed my body too far and was risking collapse. And I was sad, so desperately sad, and I couldn’t understand why. I was so overcome that my body trembled and tears burned my eyes. My chest ached and I struggled to breathe.
How is this the thing that unravels me?
Why was I so angry? Why was I falling apart over this? Why did any of this even matter?
It mattered because this was not my normal. It mattered because all of this–all of it–was not what we had hoped for or wanted.
It mattered because what I was actually feeling was grief.
Grief is like that. The smallest thing scratches the veneer of our smooth exterior, and suddenly a massive chasm opens before us. What we thought was minimal and inconsequential somehow manages to collapse, in one swift motion, all the composure we so carefully constructed. Grief often lies in wait. It comes in many forms for many reasons. And it doesn’t stay silent forever.
The crisis had almost nothing to do with school pick-ups or furnace repairs or evenings in bed. That was simply the tipping point. It was the gateway to grief, the invitation to finally step into the reality and loss of that season.
I tend to imagine grief as a negative–something to flee, or at least suppress. It’s the thing that lurks, threatening to overturn the composure I work so hard to maintain. But I wonder sometimes if it isn’t something different. An doorway, perhaps. An opportunity. The chance to step fully into the freedom of feeling. To release all of the pretense and good intention that holds me back and just be free in the emotion of my situation.
Oh, but it’s terrifying. I fear I’ll be lost in the sea of emotion forever.
Yet every sea has a shore, and so does grief.
Awash in the waves of grief, though, I am finally free to acknowledge everything I’ve felt all along: This season is unfair. This journey is painful. I miss what used to be. This is maddening. Heartbreaking. Gut-wrenching. This is not what I wanted.
In those moments of honesty, I feel the tension draining from my body with every word. I’ve held them too long. There is catharsis in grief, a working out of the ugly truth so that it has a release.
Grief is not the enemy lurking to ambush me. It is an invitation. An opportunity.
It is a gift. A necessary, inevitable gift.
