a garden for grief.
This fall my husband and I set a running challenge – run 50 miles in September and you get $50 to spend on whatever you want (board games for him…probably girls night out for me). I found a nice route I liked around a park about a mile from my house and spent most afternoons just trying to get home in less than an hour (slow runners unite!).
Partway through the month I noticed lawn signs popping up on my running route with the phrase “Justice for Willow” written in pink on them. It’s hard to read that sign and not have your heart sink – police investigators found evidence of intentional abuse of a baby girl at a daycare that resulted in severe brain damage. Those lawn signs were just the beginning of a tragic season in our community.
There is no deeper grief one can walk on this earth than the death of a child. It is an assault on the natural process and trajectory of life – we are supposed to bury our old, not our young. The first weekend in November a shooting happened at a casino just outside of town, leaving 3 dead – one a dear friend of my uncle’s – and a high school girl orphaned in a senseless act. Minutes later on the other side of town a drunk driver speeding in the wrong lane collided with a mother and her 7-year-old daughter, killing them instantly.
From that point on, death and tragedy would not stop haunting our community. Our close friends lost their precious 8-year-old great nephew in a car accident as his family made their way to their home for Thanksgiving.
There is no deeper grief than burying a child.
In early December I was singing my son to sleep with the familiar words of O Holy Night and thought of all of these precious people mourning loss:
A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
I held my son tight, knowing there were many others who wish they could be doing the same. And as I sang, two words struck me in that verse….weary and yonder.
It’s hard not to feel weary as 2021 closes and 2022 begins. 2020 was the year of the toilet paper shortage and the quarantines and the memes – but that feels so long ago now. We are still trying to make our way through a pandemic that at the very least has disrupted us – and for many so much more. To add death and tragedy to this already difficult season – weary feels barely strong enough to hold the burdens people are carrying.
But…yonder.
Without hope – pain becomes anger, and anger has nowhere to go but down. Deeper into our souls, festering with rage and bitterness. But with hope – the hope Christ promises in His return, secured with a down payment of His Spirit – sadness and grief has its place. We can grieve because deep down we know this is not our destiny, this is not the world we were created for and thus awful things will happen we can’t explain or understand. We grieve because this was not God’s design. We hope because we know God is in the process of setting it all right.
Paul says it well in 2 Corinthians:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Maverick City Music just released a new song that brings me to tears every time I hear it. It’s a beautiful song that illustrates and reminds me how Christ has changed not only our future life, but our daily life. I’m so moved by the line:
“I’ve still got joy in chaos
I’ve got peace that makes no sense
So, I won’t be going under
I’m not held by my own strength
‘Cause I’ve built my life on Jesus
He’s never let me down
He’s faithful in every season
So why would He fail now…”
This season has been tremendously sad, hard – enraging at times. And I’m just watching from the sidewalk. But I know that Hope changes everything. Hope is the soil that gives our grief a place to grow.
As I ran past the signs for Willow last fall I would always pray for two things. First, for a miracle of healing in her brain and body – this is not beyond God’s reach, even here. Second, that the outcome of this story would not be bitterness and despair. I pray for those precious parents that daily walk the challenges of their new life – that they would succumb to even the smallest bit of hope. God can take even this unspeakable pain and heal in places nothing else possibly could. That’s a miracle too. It is the miracle of the gospel.
Reading Rachel 
Rachel,
I am so moved by how you write. It brings me to tears sometimes. It has been a hard season, that is for sure, but that verse in 2 con. Brings so much hope (like you where saying). The Holy Spirit has brought that verse to to mind a couple times now. Thank you for writing this and may the Hope of Christ carry us through until His return. Praise be to God.
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