Faithful Paradox

I find my heart is in a very sensitive space these days. Next week will close out 4 years now without Ezra. As I stepped into September, I felt a heaviness settling in; a sense of tender grief stirring once again.

Grief is strange because in many ways, not only do you grieve what was lost, but you also begin to feel the anticipation of the grief that is coming. In these days surrounding the day of loss, my mind goes to those last days with Ezra. At the same time, I also anticipate the sadness that has stirred again and I brace myself for the weight of the coming grief. While I know it is not as hard and heavy as it once was, there is still deep sadness that stirs as I revisit the sorrow.

Before losing Ezra, I used to think of grief as more linear; that there was some road traveled which brought mile markers of healing along the way. I imagine much of it was the idea of the stages of grief that has been widely taught for decades – that grief is something you move through, stage by stage.

What I realize now is that grief is not linear. It does not come so much in stages, rather it’s cyclical. It travels by the way of a spiral, passing time and again by moments, dates, and experiences that invite the heart to revisit painful memories. With each passing, you engage the grief a little differently, yet the reality is, the pain still exists every time you cycle past the loss. The grief never fully resolves, rather, it lingers with different degrees of intensities that come and go.

I used to think faith and trust in God would eliminate the sadness and confusion or, at the very least, make it feel less weighty as the cycle continues. I thought if I could somehow reach a point of sincerely surrendering to God’s plan there would be resolve in that space. I thought that in some way, if I truly believed, “not my will but yours be done,” it would soften the pain and sorrow; knowing I was trusting God would mean grief would lessen. What I am realizing now is that this perspective was deeply flawed because it eliminates what it is to be human. Even the perfect faith of Christ did not eliminate his humanity.

As I think about Jesus and his suffering on the cross, he was fully human yet he had perfect faith. He had perfect trust in God yet this trust did not eliminate his suffering. It did not ease his sorrow. Jesus’ suffering on the cross was real. It was intense. It was excruciating. His trust and faith in the Father did not lessen the pain he endured. He didn’t slap on a happy face and proclaim, “God is good all the time!” He didn’t shove down the sorrow. He wept. He cried out to God. He endured and suffered and then he gave up his spirit, entrusting it to the hands of his Father.

Jesus knew his Father’s faithfulness required him to endure the cross and he submitted himself to the Father’s plan, despite the pain it required. I think he knew the plan did not involve God rescuing him out of his suffering, so he endured. He was able to do this, in part, because he knew with certainty that the suffering was not the end. He knew his death led to something far greater and that is the hope of every Christian: because of Christ, suffering never has the final word. While loss is a piece of the story, a chapter in the book, there is a glorious ending.

Yet even if the end is sure, these middle chapters of life are often wrought with pain and sorrow; cyclical story arcs that come again and again. Even happy endings still demand a journey through the dark. For me, the hopeful ending of Christ’s ultimate triumph is more sweetly anticipated now because of the hardship of these middle chapters.

I find now, when the pain cycles once again, when dates and moments remind me of what has been lost, when the middle chapters of the story tempt me to despair, I must remind myself of the final chapter. I must return to the end, and assure my tender heart that there is still good news. There is redemption yet to come even as I cycle past another reminder of what was lost.