Grief and great sadness have been circulating through my veins all week. My morning views during early walks have been blurred with tears and laments of loss with the One who creates all things.
How, oh God, can these tragedies of angry and out-of-control waters sweep away the preciousness of the earth?
A friend met my grief in a text with her deep insightful heart, “I was thinking how you have to know how parents felt, sending their children off to camp and then their world turns upside down. I love you, Sweet Friend!” My tender heart responded with a quiet whispered yes as it touched the deepest ache.
Ann Voskamp, in her daily blog, “How to Pray to God in Tragedy and Where is God in Suffering?” said what I believe most must be feeling, “Grief can feel like a dam breach, and you feel all this aching sadness for one heartbreak… that gives way to grieving all kinds of collective losses and accumulative sadness.”
Our wounds and grief connect us with a holy thread of intimately knowing the fractured fragility of life which can mysteriously bring into a clearer focus how we are the same. Everyone who has ever lived has suffered losses and sadness. Perhaps that is the way of becoming one—to connect to the wounds of another.
Recently I spoke to a group of nursing students about our experiences of Jessie’s accident with the focus on how each of us has special ingredients inside to give hope to the fractured and fragile by “SEEING” the one in the bed.
During a “seeing exercise,” the student I was paired with asked me, “Were you angry at God for all that awfulness your daughter went through? How did you get through that?”
The question surprised me, as I had been feeling anger throughout this last week with the Texas tragedy and had been asking God a lot of questions. The words that came next soothed my own heart.
“Hmmm, such a good question. I had so many emotions at her devastation, emotions of terror, escalating fear and ravaging grief. Yet none were ‘at God,’ but more crying out to Him. I believed with all my heart God was present every moment in our grief and suffering. I didn’t feel like God did that to her. Could God have prevented the accident? Yes. Did God? No. I knew we lived in a broken world. God tells us that in scripture. But what I did know and do was cling to God and His promises. I believed He was in every moment, sending an army to help, sending provision to provide, sending massive love and prayers to hold and carry us through.” He made a way when there seemed to be no way.”
God’s creation of community is His rescue mission to our broken world as evidenced by the overwhelming response of community rushing to the heart of Texas. Their landscape has been devastated with unimaginable loss, yet there is a hope always present and now FLOODING the broken lives with provisions, compassionate and merciful love, and constant fervent prayers.
My heart focus shifted to a different way of responding:
God, how do You want me, as a part of Your community, to respond to the call of being a Hope Giver to the fractured and fragile? What have You given me that I can offer?