Grief like Fear

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear”.   CS Lewis

     I sit in my overstuffed chair bundled up with my dog, steaming coffee in my mug, old blanket from my mom wrapped tightly around me.  I started using half n half several years ago because coffee felt more like a treat with it… a small thing to round off sharp edges that poke and tear at me as I walk through this life.   I am grieving in this season losses that have and have not yet happened.  It seems the deep ones that have stolen something from my life edge in to the now to steal things I still have.  To add to my sorrow, my naivete has slipped from me and I realize with a deep understanding that at any moment what I hold dear can be swept away. 

     This realization can make me cynical, valuing everything a little less in order to dilute the intensity of my feelings and hopefully alleviate future pain.  Or on the contrary, I become inclined to cling to how precious these moments are, to not miss the minutia that makes up life.  This is the path I am I walking today.  My oldest and dearest friend is in the hospital with her baby who is battling for his life against a sudden and horrible disease.  I am helpless, it seems, to do anything to help her.  I sit by the phone waiting for updates, send out countless e-mails to ask people to pray, and have nearly worn a figure eight in my kitchen floor from pacing.  I made oatmeal for my kids today and sent them off on the bus to picture day at school, with their shirts freshly pressed and hair combed more nicely than usual.  After they left, I wondered, did I kiss them each good-bye? Did I cherish this moment?  What if something would happen and I wouldn’t have that chance again to tell them how proud I am of them or how much I love them?

     It occurs to me that in deep suffering, I am able to love with a place in my heart that is not activated during the day to day practice of living.  When I am brought to this threshold of grief, I am moving in a capacity unlike any other experience.  I am freer to love wholly.  This concept was punctuated for me when I sat with one of my clients this week.  Her husband is coming home next week after being deployed for a year in Iraq.  She said, “In one moment I am praying so hard that he would get home safely and in the next moment I am hoping he isn’t going to leave his underwear on the floor when he does get home”.   We do not stay in the tender places too long.  They are reserved for those sacred times where we are more aware of the thin veneer between this world and the next .

     Since I sat down to write the sun has peaked through the clouds, my dog has jumped off the couch, and my blanket has become too warm.  I will get up and move, aware of the space in my heart that carries my losses, holding the young soldiers who are flying home on a plane next week, carrying my friend whose world is suspended in a hospital hundreds of miles away and saying prayers for my kids on picture day at school.  Thankful for the minutia.  Thankful for the gift of today.