Guerrillas of Grace

How shall I pray?

Are tears prayers, Lord?

Are screams prayers,

or groans

or sighs

or curses?

Can trembling hands be lifted to you,

or clenched fists

or the cold sweat that trickles down my back

or the cramps that knot my stomach?

Will you accept my prayers, Lord,

my real prayers,

rooted in the muck and mud and rock of my life,

and not just the pretty, cut-flower, gracefully arranged

bouquet of words?

Will you accept me, Lord,

as I really am,

messed up mixture of glory and grime?

(~Ted Loder)

Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others. 

(~Brian Jacques)

Even mourning takes practice: resisting the distractions that insulate us from facing up to the tragedy of the world in which we find ourselves, we need to teach our children to mourn for neighbors who bear the brunt of injustice, even though we grieve as those with hope (I Thess. 4:13). Sometimes in this fallen world the best thing we can do is teach our children how to be sad.

(~James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love)

So I’m closing my eyes and I'll picture your face;
This beautiful life did not go to waste
(~from "Curtain Call" by Rosi Golan)

“It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”

(~Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay)

She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly with her foot & pretended no one had seen.
(~Brian Andreas, Story People)

Write hard and clear about what hurts.
(~Ernest Hemingway)

Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.
(~Brian Jacques)

I didn't expect the loneliness of suffering. 

In all the preparations and appointments and conversations, that part never came up. And yet that part proved equally as powerful and unmanageble as the pain itself. 

It's not that friends and family members don't try to share in it. They do— bless them—asking questions and spending long hours listening and attempting to understand. 

But I've learned that no matter the hours and days and weeks I invest trying to explain the complexities and consuming loss, I can find no words equal to the task. Try as they might to understand, a witness to a hard journey can't know what it's like to actually walk it. It's like looking at photographs of a marathon and believing you know what it feels like to actually run it. 

Instead, from a place of relative distance, the well-intentioned simply see the miracle of life that is you. They see how suffering could've swallowed you whole. And how, somehow, it didn't. For that reason, they don't see reason to mourn; they see cause for celebration. 

Still, for the person who suffers, for the one who endured the unthinkable, grief requires a reckoning. The only way to arrive at honest celebration is to, simultaneously, allow yourself honest lamentation. Those who suffer will tell you without hesitation: To live beyond loss comes at steep, steep cost. 

Someone recently asked me, "What's the hardest thing for you right now?" 

It didn't take me long to answer. 

"The choice I make every day to wake up and live." 

Yes, there is a deep loneliness in suffering. Whether it's a terminal disease, a chronic illness, the loss of a child, or the irreparable severing of a relationship, suffering brings with it an "otherness." Perhaps that is both the burden and the gift. For in this lonely place we learn how to keep company with others who find themselves there. 

For that reason, in this social media world of buffered realities, tonight the truth needed to be said. It's easy to assume that life comes back once the crisis is past. But please know this: 

Life never comes back. Never. New life can grow, and I already see evidence of that fact. But new life can only grow as it is watered by grief's tears. 

If you know someone who suffers, will you please sit with them in it? Don't try to rush them past their grief and into the safety of your celebration. There is no formula, no math that works in a place of loss. Six months, two years, a decade. For each one the timeline proves different. But to give a griever the grace of your patience and space? That might, in fact, be the sweetest gift of all.

And for my friend who suffers tonight in loneliness, this post is mostly for you. I have no cliches or platitudes or inspirational quotes. You and I both know better than that. I simply want you to know this: 

I see you. And I'm with you. As long as it takes.

(~Michelle Cushatt)

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
(~J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

So for me, Mamaw's death was my first glimpse into what family looks like in the midst of sadness and grief and heartache. I couldn't have put words to it at the time, I don't think, but somehow I could sense that there was beauty in all that brokenness, that there were little patches of light that permeated the darkness. Yes, there was sorrow and pain--but there was also love and comfort and laughter and joy. There was a confidence that something bigger was at work, an assurance of "an eternal glory that far outweighs them all" (2 Corinthians 4:17, NIV).
(~Sophie Hudson, A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet, p. 8)

"Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

(~Leo Tolstoy)

“There is a sacredness in tears. 

They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. 

They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. 

They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, 

     of deep contrition 

     and of unspeakable love.”

(~Washington Irving)

The sacred ground of tears leaves no room for words today.

"Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” 

(~ Brian Jacques, Taggerung)

Kimberly Alden Smith. August 30, 1973 - November 8, 2012