Grief is a heavy thing. It weighs on my heart and makes it hard to breath. It makes me long for the day when there is no more sickness or death. When there are no more tears of sorrow and pain. Unfortunately, that day is not here.
Today was the day of another funeral.
This is the fourth one I’ve attended in the last six months; the second one for a teenager. In addition, there have been several other deaths in last few months. Some of them friends, some of them loved ones of friends. To say that I am sick of death would be a gross understatement!
So as I walked into the sanctuary with my girls for this funeral, I started biting my cheek hoping to stop the ugly cry that was creeping up into my throat. I was largely successful until the music started…
For me, the funeral was not just about the loss of this one beautiful young woman, but all the losses over the last few months. The sadness, the pain, the hurt seem too much to bear. My heart can take no more! Yet, in the midst of it, there is a stirring; a knowing that something or someone is there.
Hope.
A hope that this is not all; this is not the end. I have a God who loves us and has made a way for us through Jesus Christ. Jesus is my Hope. It is to Him that my soul cries out with sighs and groans because there are no words. It is Him that I long to see and hear, knowing He alone can bring the comfort and peace my soul needs and yearns for.
I wish I could say that these words take away the pain and the sorrow. They don’t. Grief doesn’t work that way. It’s a process. But when the waves come and I feel like I’m going under, I call out to Hope. And He comes. He holds me and reminds me this is not the end….
