A Simple Brown Package

When I opened up the mailbox, there was a large brown paper package addressed to my precious guy, of course, from J. Crew.  Somehow Tod had order this over a month ago, so it must have been on back order and it arrived today. A fresh reminder of the loss we are living with each day.  I couldn’t help but smile knowing that Tod would have loved to open that package and seen that beautiful Italian grey cashmere sweater vest aching to be worn.  No doubt he had already thought through what shirt, pants, belt, and shoes it would have been worn with and looking handsome as ever.

 

As I step more fully into each day, the reality that Tod isn’t going to be walking through our back door is feeling more real. I find myself processing life with the undergirding of sorrow.  It is just present. Yet at the same time I find that sorrow has a strange beauty all its’ own and in this unusual space my other feelings like love, joy, sadness, and even peace feel far more full and real.  I have been sitting in the book of Ecclesiastes as of late, and in chapter 7:3-4 it says, 

“Sorrow is better than laughter for sadness has a refining influence on us.  A wise person thinks about death while a fool thinks only about having a good time.”  

 I assume I have read that before, but never has it been more alive or applicable to the space we are currently living.  I don’t know that I remember many sermons on how “sorrow is better than laughter.”  I probably would have assented intellectually but my heart would have forgotten pretty quickly as I went on about chasing "laughter." But reality now is that life is brief and temporal and sorrow is visiting.  God’s word again succinctly puts life in perspective for me and encourages my aching heart that none of this pain and loss is meaningless though.

As I was reading in Tod’s Bible yesterday, I came across a passage that he had underlined in Lamentations.  Whenever I read verses that he underlined my heart just crushes on him for a moment just to know I am reading something that God used to touch his heart.  These verses just washed all over me inviting me into grief and hope at the same time.  It says, 

“I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness his mercies begin afresh each morning.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.”  Lamentations 3:20-25 (NLT) 

I love how God's word deals in the truth of our human experience not negating the pain of our existence, but lifting our eyes in the midst of it and breathing hope into that very space.

A hot shower is a sacred space to me.  In the quietness, steam, and heat, I often find that my thoughts become more focused on "life" and conversation begins with the Lord while standing under the hot water.  So my “shower” conversations as of late have been centered on the reality that loss and grief are inevitable in this life.  It is either in our past, currently present, or coming our way.  It can’t and won’t be avoided in this broken world.   The other “shower” conversation I seem to visit with currently is the precious opportunity to live one day at a time authentically before God whether in the midst of tears, laughter, pain, struggle, or joy with my amazing kids. He lets me grieve and He acknowledges the loss, and then He reminds me that He is faithful and His love, mercy, and grace never run out.  They are an inexhaustible ocean. His mercies are new every morning, perfectly measured out for me one day at a time.  The Lamentations passage brings those two worlds so perfectly together for me, so while I can't understand His plans, I can trust them because His plans always include hope.

So when people ask me how I’m doing right now the answer tends to be, “embracing one precious day at a time before the Lord, and at the end of the day, I’m one day closer to heaven.”