I haven’t blogged in a while because our family is reeling from some really difficult news. Suddenly, reality has shifted. The life as we had known it is gone. And while there is a great deal of hope that we can make it through this thing, we also recognize that we may not come through it without a limp, and certainly not without being significantly different.
Whatever the prognosis, walking in the doors of a cancer center is life altering.
And so, on the front end, we are grieving. We are feeling it. And those that grieve, that feel it, know that words like “heart ache” aren’t metaphors. The physical muscle actually hurts in our chests.
The predecessors of my faith tradition, though, would have me both embrace the journey of grief and look for an expansion within that same grief.
One of the most perplexing aspects of the accounts of Jesus comes at the end of the book known as Mark. In the other three accounts of Jesus’ life, after he dies on a Roman cross, he rises from the dead in a profoundly different body just a few days later. No one expected this. It is a shock. There is joy…and renewed hope…and a fresh surge of courage.
Not so in Mark. Following Jesus’ burial, this is how Mark ends, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”
The end.
There is talk of resurrection in Mark, but no sign of it. All we are left with is a vague hope and a much more real trembling, bewilderment, and fear.
I can relate.
Early followers of Jesus struggled so much with this ending that they felt compelled to add to it: including the appearing of Jesus, and miraculous powers, and language of ultimate victory. They just couldn’t handle a text that didn’t end in sight.
But Mark left as it originally was is also a true story. Sometimes you have to stay in that place of bewilderment, trembling, and fear. Sometimes you aren’t able to hurry on to the good news, the light at the end, the peace that transcends understanding.
Sometimes it is required that you sit with your grief.
Andy Raine of the Northumbria Community put it this way, “Do not hurry as you walk with grief; it does not help the journey. Walk slowly, pausing often…Take time, be gentle as you walk with grief.”
Okay…so the traditional movement of the accounts of Jesus in the Greek Scriptures go from Matthew, to Mark, to Luke, and then on to John. But there are those that are pointing to evidence that originally it was John, not Luke, that followed Mark. So that after you are left hanging with confusion and fear—grief!—with Mark, you then get this with John:
“In the beginning was the Word (Jesus)…In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Do you see what just happened there? The early followers of Jesus believed that you had to sit with grief, sometimes end your day with grief, sometimes ride with grief through multiple sunsets. But they also believed, that if you were to do that well, there would be a new awareness of light, a deeper recognition of life, a wider opening into immeasurable expansion out the other side.
And so, in the midst of our pain, we can expect to find, as we choose to take the next step and the next step, that there will be a break through, an awakening, into deeper life and joy that doesn’t replace the suffering, but grows out of and brings meaning to that suffering.
But we’ll have to be gentle with ourselves. And patient. And patient.
And patient.
I can’t see it.
Yet.
Wait…. Do you have cancer? Or you are being tested for cancer? Or if not you, then who? Praying for you and your family.
Thank you for sharing this. Beautifully written. Grief is a slow process. I think we harm ourselves and others when we try to rush through it!
Yes.
Unless you have been through it, you cannot imagine how difficult the news of cancer is. Just want you to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers and we grieve with you. We know that you will feel a closeness to God that you never felt before as you go through this experience. God is faithful, may you feel His love and peace in new ways. We send our love and prayers. Steve and Elsie
Thank you.
One of my favorite poets writes this:
When I Am Asked
BY LISEL MUELLER
When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.
It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.
I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.
I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.
Lisel Mueller, “When I am Asked” from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.
I think it’s profound that as you write these words on the blog, you might be able to find a space for the grief process. Also makes me think about Jesus as the Word in the verses you mentioned, and in the case of the poem, he’s the Words in which we can place our grief. We’re committed to walk this through with you as we wait.
Thanks for sharing the poem, and your own words.
I am with you. My heart hurts with you. I miss you, my friend.
Miss you too. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing, so we can talk about this and share our grief with you. I don’t feel like I grieve well. I want too much to skim, to avoid and not be patient. I want to be your brother. Take time and take solid advice and be patient.
Thanks.
My heart aches for and with you. But, I pray, too, that your family would sense the ever-present Spirit of The Healer…comforting, sustaining, encouraging and when you need this with skin on, my arms are always ready with a big hug.
I’m down with hugs.
So real, Jake. You are loved.
Please know that your family is loved and in our prayers. As one who received such news 20 some years ago, my heart goes out to you (especiallyJulie). I also know God’s comforting and healing power and I pray the same for you.
Thank you for sharing…and praying.
I know grief, and heartache, and pain, and despair. I know courage, and perseverance, and hope, and joy. It is both/and, life and love. I’m here for you through it all.
Yes. Both/and.
There was a time I my late thirties when my life was snuffed out with clinical depression . I call it the black hole. It sucks all Light from your life including your very soul. Nothing escapes a black whole. You are so right Jake your whole “reality “changes . The pain and and grief was such that I contemplated taking my life. Just then a still small voice…”stand up and walk forward see what’s on the other side..” It did not take away the agony but it gave me a glimmer of hope that indeed there is another side . I’m still walking.
Keep walking.
Well spoken. Keep writing. So much there. Thank you.