This is Not the End

This… is NOT… the end!  This bride, you and I will rise, come alive like third day morning first breaths of Christ!

These words broke open my heart this morning.  I felt disconnected today and couldn’t quite get at what I was feeling.  My very absence of feelings was telling.  I sat down to respond to an email and began to listen to the song, “This is not the end” by Gungor.  In the live recording, spoken word artist Amena Brown proclaims the truth that opened my heart.  I began to cry.  To be honest, it was a relief. 

A phrase that has been a comfort to me in the past few years is “the story is not over yet.” When I’ve found myself in moments of despair, the deep belief is that this circumstance will be the end of me.  Nothing will change.  I am doomed to a life fraught with pain and loneliness.  It is in those moments that I need to be reminded that this is not the end.  Even though everything in my wants to believe the opposite. 

Last Sunday at church, my pastor spoke similarly, that when we’re in grief, we feel as though this is the end of the story.  This is the lie that I continue to believe.  I am convinced at times that the story I live is a tragedy.  Yet, that is not what my God says:

Those who sow in tears

    shall reap with shouts of joy!

-        Ps.126:5 ESV

As I see it, we can hold onto the truth that this is not the end for two reasons.  First, unless I die right now, this is not the literal end.  Second, and this is the lasting piece, the end of our story, the big metanarrative, ends with us with God in heaven.  My time on the earth may end happily or tragically, but my time on this earth is not the ultimate end. 

Yet, here I am on this earth, in the midst of a story.  And the hope of being with God in heaven, if I’m honest, can feel intangible at times.  Recently, I read a book by Jerry Sittser, A Grace Revealed, (a sort of follow-up to his beautifully tender book on grief, A Grace Disguised) that explores the idea of narrative and redemption.  While considering the nature of the story we are all in, Sittser recounts his own experience of redemption.  At the same time, he holds and acknowledges the pieces of the story that are yet to be fulfilled, completed or answered.  There is a tension that exists between the now and the not yet.   

I grew up in a church that taught and lived out a kingdom theology.  The kingdom of God has begun on earth (this is what makes redemption possible now), but it has not been fully actualized.  There is tension as we wait for the fullness of this kingdom life.  I may experience shades of God redeeming parts of my story today, but there may be aspects of my story that remain unresolved on this side of life.  There is a deeper, more complete redemption of my story that is to come. 

What will it look like, when we experience the fullness of God’s kingdom?  It’s told best here:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

-          Rev. 21:1-4, ESV

Transition and Grief

Hello Readers,

I wrote the blog below in the past year.  Last April it was posted on The Aurora Crossing blog, but I realized that I'd never posted it here.  

Enjoy (wait, can I encourage you to "enjoy" when it's a post about grief?)

……….

Here’s a little insight into how I operate.  I’m an avoider.  I don’t like going into my pain.  It scares me.  No. It is more accurate to say that it terrifies me.  I’ll do anything I can to numb out and ignore the big, sparkly pink elephant in the room (he also may or may not have flashing lights in an elaborate headdress).  That is, until the grief will no longer be contained.  As much as I hate, hate, hate when this happens, I’m also relieved.  Whatever pent up emotions I hold onto weren’t meant to stay put and the process of releasing them feels freeing.

I’ve begun to think that grief is a normal part of life.  Now, not every experience will elicit the same level of grief, but if I really think about it, I am saying goodbye to people, places, and things all the time.  Unfortunately, I live in a society that does not value grieving.  In America, we value moving forward.  Progress.  Pushing through adversity.  This can be a good value to have.  However, when the focus is purely on moving forward, saying goodbye is often seen as clinging to the past and even labeled as a weakness.  These beliefs can result in defining grief as acceptable or unacceptable.  You can grieve over the death of a family member, but don’t you dare grieve over the loss of a community due to moving.

Our grief in America is also privatized.  We emulate the Marlboro man, as we walk off alone into the sunset of our own sadness.  At the last Winter Olympics, an athlete from another country was killed in a luging accident.  I remember seeing video of the community grieving together.  The people were walking around and wailing for this person they didn’t know.  My initial response to this open display of sadness was “Why are they crying for this stranger?”  It struck me as so odd and foreign.  But then my next thought was, “This is a culture that values grieving.”

In the Bible, we’re given glimpses of the grieving rituals in Israel.  At times, this included hiring a professional mourner.  Yes, that is a person hired to cry, wail,  and beat their breast when a person dies (but the real question is, does it have good medical benefits?).   Again, this is a culture that values grieving.  Jesus was no stranger to grief.  One of the most personally moving examples of Jesus’ grief is when his good friend Lazarus died.  What did Jesus do?  In one of the most succinct and powerful verses in the Bible, Jesus wept (John 11:35).  Then he rose Lazarus back to life.  But not before he grieved and acknowledged the deep sadness in death.

I think one of the challenges in grief is entering into the tension of feeling the sadness, anger, and guilt over what can no longer be, while still clinging to the belief that the story does not end here.  It’s not ignoring the pain, but it’s also not letting the pain be (ultimately) the tragic end.  Sometimes, I get lost in my grief, or I avoid it for fear of getting lost in it.  It is in those moments when I see that I was not made to walk this path alone.

Grief is to be journeyed with others.  It has been scary to let safe people into my grief.  I often have to start by just stating my experience and as I begin to trust those people, the emotions eventually come.  This has been a process for me and I still have a ways to go.  Just this week I had a good friend over for dinner.  I was talking about my experience of singleness lately and she mentioned how disconnected my facial expressions were from the clearly painful story I was telling.  I took a risk, and allowed myself to really feel my sadness with another.  These are messy places for us to go, but I truly believe that as communities, this is one of the most significant gifts we can offer to another: the gift of company.

Isaiah prophecies Christ, calling him a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.  Even in the times when it feels like no earthly human can meet me in my grief, I am not alone.  Jesus, who experientially knows grief is there, with me, loving me.  In the midst of grief, he is our divine company.