Reminiscences from 2009 on the grief Journey of my life

Restoration of my soul in the expression of God’s divine love to me in His providence of restoring three for one, in sons.

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase, so I, hopefully run the race, till I see Christ.
Jesus will  be the only true healing for the grief stricken soul.  The sight of Christ will erase all of the memories of pain upon this earth.  Every once in a while, I attain to that point.  I used to imagine that the sight of a new son would complete the process and the grief would be gone.   Like they  said of Joseph that the sights of Ephraim and Menassah,  or at least the name of them meant that the remembrance of the grief was erased.  I have kept waiting for such a thing to happen.  I see that there are occasions, where the beauty of the Lord erases the remembrance of the deepest grief.  It would not be called deep grief, if there were not much to take to erase it.

There is not a friend like the lowly Jesus.   There is not a beauty like the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the grieving mother.  God loves the grieving soul.  God comes near in solace, no matter how much you resist His comfort.  God enters in the beauty of His holiness and there is much comfort and peace in His ministry, but the blindness and deafness of grief often resist His nearest embraces.   Like the wrestlings of Annie Sullivan to the blind an
d deaf child caught in the distance of tools of communication.  God sends messages of Love, holy love, which are painful and interpreted incorrectly by the grieving heart.  He comes in the Holy Spirit to express love.

I tried the smell of hyacinths to cover the painful smell of breastmilk and my own body which were grievous forever.  The smell of death of someone closer than your own soul, it felt like.  That comfort worked for a little while.   I tried to hold the children as close to my heart as possible, all the time, unable to satiate the grief of the loss.  I tried looking at beautiful places, like arboretum and botanical gardens to try to find a place of beauty where the pain couldn’t reach me.  It always catches me there. There is no place of solace for the soul in grief.   I justify God and learn of Him.  Each day He gave me new comforts from His word and new encouragement s in His psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.   There is no place to hide from that grief.  It will heal, they say.  Time heals all wounds, they say.  Look at what you have, they say.   Let go and let God, they say.  All comforts, but all untrue.  Jesus will make it right when I see him.

Every once in a while there is a beauty of life or kind a creature or theory that takes my heart to that place above the grief.  I must enjoy it for the moment.  I must sa
vor that taste of beauty, for just that very moment.  That hope of comfort in anything but the grave.  Something to hope about, but the ending of this struggle against the pain of grief.  I see that person for the moment.  I see that flower or that  exalted theory in scripture for but a moment and it satiates, for just that moment and then I land, sometimes on feet and sometimes not.  On this earth, I know that I will land again.  God builds the language of love that enters in where no other thing can.  The Holy Spirit allows a method of communication to begin in the grief that is like the signing of Annie and Helen.   Water, I say to him.  You love me, even now, I say to him.  I can’t feel it in my grief.   I know it is there.  Every touch, every glance of eye to eye, brings a pain of truth that means that the love of God is alive.  Even though, especially on this day, it is hard to see and feel.  Pain is perceived, love is perceived, but the trickle that continues down into the soul is limited by the pain.

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase, so run the race, till we see Him.  No other face, though beauty and comfort are there in them are as lasting as the eternal comfort of Jesus.  None else can, not cover, but heal all my soul’s diseases.  Don’t feel sorry for me, this is the language that God is bu
ilding with me.  I am sure that each person has their own griefs that God is speaking to them through.  This is my ichabod.  God wrestles me.  God shows me His goodness and my wretchednesses.  There is no cure for my wretchedness, but in Christ.  There is no cure for my pain but in Christ.  As my soul falls and falls into the abyss of the pain, every day,  I have to trust that He is going to catch me, before I end in Hell.  I have no control of the feeling of the pain. He made me blind and deaf to the comforts until He in His Grace builds the bridges.  The bridges and the interpretations of the comforts are His to do.

I am the person whose God is the Lord, can a woman forget her own son.  Can she forget the child of her bosom, is there a greater grief?  Many, probably?  I don’t know and I am not comparing.  I just know how God deals with me, in my pains.  He is faithful.  He makes the communication possible.  He enters the grief.  He anchors my soul when it starts to spin out.  He sends the life-raft when I am floundering in the deep.  He sends the hand of love on my shoulder to understand when this grief is even too big for the dearest ones to me to understand.
He never says, aren’t you over that yet?   He never says, are you crying about that again?  He never says, Will you ever stop talking and fussing and losing a dearly beloved? He never says that?   No, he sends, just the right comfort to the area, again and again.   I lose it!  He is there.  I go crazy in my grief.  He is there.   I can’t take it anymore.  He is even there.   The tenacity of Annie Sullivan is nothing compared to God’s great love.  He is the fairest of 10000 to my soul.  He sends that beauty for me to see and I am comforted and He is in that comfort as well.  W-A-T-E-R,  I thought it was milk, said Helen,  whatever it was, it was thirst quenching.   I learned that words meant things.  That beauty was a comfort from God.  That my soul is in a tenuous condition,  in the grief.  I can’t trust myself.  I can’t comfort myself.  They don’t have the sickness that I have.  There is no “quick fix” for what I have.  Maybe there is a quick fix for the other things that these people have.  I will be crawling on my hands and knees and make very little progress.  I will be walking around the table of heaven.  Picking the food off the table with my hands like a dog,  because my heart hurts.  Because my pain is intense everyday.  It will be worth it all.  His face will make it worth it all.  And I do believe that.  Every once in a while, He sends a comforting glance from someone and I know it is from God.  He can’t love me like that can He?  Yes He says,  even stuck in the slough of dispond!