Our Endless Grieving Days
For when nothing makes sense.
Part One: Personal Grief
On Saturday I attended a funeral for a friend from college. I sent a book to her less than a month ago; we shared our “find my phone” locations because we used to see movies together and kept track of how far the other was from the theater. Earlier this week—over a week since she passed—the flashing blue dot of her location was still appearing at the house she rented.
In January I attended another funeral for my high school small group leader at church. One time he gave me advice to call the girl I was in love with; another time he hugged me while I cried over a friend’s health troubles.
They were both incredible people. Both funerals came far too soon.
—
This feels incredibly stupid and self-centered to share—a suburban prayer in a sea of crises—but the funeral on Saturday was held at a church across the street from where an ex lives. I didn’t realize it until I put the address in my maps and started driving.
I sat in the funeral and saw all the couples sitting and crying together and comforting each other and I couldn’t help but wish she would just walk across the street and comfort me. I didn’t have anyone to hug. I didn’t have anyone to hold my hand. I didn’t have anyone to drive home with afterwards. Just a podcast about the NBA playoffs—words to fill the empty space but not to offer any personal consolation.
Part Two: National Grief
Grief also runs rampant nationally. Buffalo and Uvalde and politicians who refuse to act. There is a stanza of a Wendell Berry poem making the rounds right now, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.
Nineteen more names of children were added to the list this past week, all for the sake of what? The second amendment? The freedom to purchase assault rifles?
—
A current Oklahoma senator was one of the heads of the Southern Baptist church camp I attended when I was younger. It must have been 2005 or 2006 when I attended; I remember him because he was a really skinny guy with a deep voice and I was a really skinny teenager who hoped for a deep voice. I wanted to be like him someday.
Last week the Southern Baptist Convention released the findings of an independent investigation which revealed widespread abuse and cover-ups. A secret list of over 700 names had been compiled since 2007 with abuse cases dating back to the 1960s; the leadership of the SBC never released the list because they didn’t want to be held legally accountable for the abuses.
Rather than protecting the abused, they sought to protect themselves. Shameful and despicable.
In the past week, this Oklahoma senator and former Baptist camp coordinator has not tweeted anything regarding the investigation and has only tweeted once about Uvalde (thoughts and prayers). Instead, he has tweeted fifteen times about illegal immigration.
In a land of death and abuse, he speaks about neither.
Interlude
If I seek a distraction from personal grief I encounter national grief; if I seek a distraction from national grief I encounter personal grief.
—
We are each carrying these griefs—large and small, national and private. They compile and congeal, layering upon each other, blending together like sedimentary rock, calcifying our hearts.
Part Three: Nothing Makes Sense
Yesterday was Ascension Sunday. It’s the Sunday we read and ponder Jesus promising us the Holy Spirit then rising on the clouds and heading into heaven.
In Luke it says the disciples watched Jesus ascend and worshipped him, returning to Jerusalem “with great joy.” But yesterday in my church I didn’t think about the joy, I just thought about the absence. I imagined watching the tangible Jesus ascending into the clouds and wondering whether I would ever get to hug him again. I wondered if the disciples had any fear mixed in with that “great joy.”
In the Ascension story in Acts 1, the disciples ask Jesus if now was the time he would restore the kingdom of Israel. If he would finally make all things new and perfect forever and ever and ever. He answered,
“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you….”
I believe I have the Holy Spirit, and I believe in the Holy Spirit’s presence. But right now I feel like those disciples, wondering why God can’t just heal the hurting and tear down the powerful.
Where is heaven in this land of grief? Where is Jesus in this land of desolation?
—
Growing up my love of God was often tied to understanding God. A child of privilege, the world made sense; school shootings happened in other places and untimely deaths happened to other friend groups.
—
Each week my church takes the Eucharist (communion) by walking to the front and receiving the bread and wine from our rector (pastor). Each week I take the wafer and dip it in the cup, holding it in front of my mouth long enough to look at the cross and pledge my devotion to Christ for the upcoming week, imbibing the Holy Spirit and renewing my commitment.
Yesterday I took the wafer and dipped it in the cup and looked at the cross and chewed and swallowed. Can I still worship God if I do not understand God?
A member of the church’s prayer team was standing on the side—I walked up to her, told her about the funeral on Saturday and the one back home in January. Her eyes grew big and without thinking, in one fluid motion, she brought her hands around my body and pulled me close. She held me there while I cried, and after we pulled away I saw she was crying too.
That confused me at first; I didn’t know why she would cry. She didn’t know either of the people who had passed. She wasn’t at their funerals. She wasn’t required to grieve.
But then I realized: she was crying because I was crying. She was grieving because I was grieving.
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7).
There, in that hug, reeling with the knowledge that the world is not making sense and justice is not prevailing, God was beside me, alongside my grief.
Jesus’ literal body ascended to heaven, but he was not absent. The wafer and wine—his Body and Blood—was somehow miraculously also sitting in my chest at that very moment, and the Helper he promised was hugging me tight.
—
I do not understand God. I grieve. But I believe God cries with me.
The past few days I have been listening to a playlist I made called “Calm My Soul.” Here’s the link in case it might help you, too:
I hope you are well. Sit with God, go to counseling, hug your friends, take care of yourself. You are loved.
(Note: People can usually respond to these emails, but I’ve turned off that function for this post because I need just a bit of personal space to keep processing / grieving / taking care of myself. I’m grateful for each of you.)