Tuesday's Trust - Another's Grief...

Tuesday's Trust

Another's Grief...

I heard a message once that faith does not make the grief hurt any less, and I appreciate the honesty of that because I think we do people an unspeakable disservice when we assume that faith somehow ought to make it less painful of a road to walk.

~Alina Sato, in a response to the post by Guy Delcambre printed below

As the following writer also says, 

"one foot in front of the other while the day just burns and trust is the only value holding. it’s a lasting rhythm of grace in our lives..." 

~Guy Delcambre 

May God help us hold on to that trust!

Grief, 3 little girls and God somewhere.

by Guy

Some say death is the ultimate end to all that we know.
For many, it is.

My wife died, and that’s completely all there is to it.

In one moment, breath and dreams and family and tomorrow.  In the next, nothing.  Just that quickly did death find my family and measure our days short.
The end.

No grand finale or poetic poise to faith resurrecting in the damnedest of circumstance but a bludgeoned entrance of death into the innocence of the good we knew.  Death takes without asking, steals without repaying and enters without permission or concern.

We were five all together.  Minus her, my wife, we are now four; myself and my young daughters left to a new day foreign, still speaking the language of yesterday.

It’s been two years since my wife drew her last breath in an ICU room after five days of being supported by medicine and machines, and finally I feel as though we are just beginning to level out.  You could imagine the polarized difference between a household balanced with two loving parents being reduced to half and the weight it would add.  Add sorrow and grief into the mix and the emptiness of daughter without mother.  And now add the emotional differences of three little girls and a hollowed out, shell-shocked dad.  That’s a recipe for implosion, full meltdown.

There’s a good chance you can’t imagine it.  I couldn’t prior to the day that found us.

Beyond the one no longer alive is the one no longer living.  Like a fire sale, death bargains for them both or them all.  The one no longer here, body a broken, lifeless temple, and the other left stranded in a hopeless, darkened, echoing day where death cuts deep and the loneliness even deeper.  Those who remain, they are the walking dead alive mostly in haunting, loving memories; lost in and detached from a new arriving, unchosen day.  Every day.

“I wish I could die.”

Those words rang through my thoughts, not violently, but with a weariness of heart tired before sunrise and ill at ease in the dark of night.  Sleep gave no rest and day no advance.  I wasn’t myself anymore.  I was halved.

Faith had a ceiling

and love had end.

Death reaching for two, it’s selfish in that way.

I moved at a pace slowed by shock and sorrow, a half step behind, a shadow shuffling lost into days that kept breaking like waves crashing onto the shore …pulling …and grabbing …and taking with each day crashing into the next more of the broken ground I stood on.

Tragedy in the form of death unexpected and unannounced forever changed my family.  My daughters aged 3, 6 and 8 years old at the time were forced out of comfort and the arms of their mother into an abyss grief and life uncharted.  There aren’t any exact manuals on how to handle life when it turns so sharply.  For the longest time, I just floated and held on for as long as I could, sometimes only minutes.  Then I would let go.  Every day stretched out so big and impossible.  Some days, waking up nearly took all that I had.  Many days were filled with questions belonging to no easy answer and tears just falling free.  But oh my, how their faces seemed to find smiles bent upward honestly!  In this stronger day, I can still hardly believe it or much less handle it.  I am overwhelmed by God’s strong love breaking the brunt of waves crashing in our lives.

We should be so much worse off, but we’re not.  This day is better than the last and the one before.

The immeasurable depth of God’s goodness and grace to find us in every crumbling moment is nothing less than the greatest miracle dawning the darkest of my nights.

For He finds us in the thinnest spaces, where scales threaten our sight and our hearts lose life.  He pursues us to the deepest depth.  His grace ever set upon us with the strength of forever.

:::::::

Tomorrow belongs to us together and God’s undying grace blossoming buds of hope in the soil of death.

~by Guy Delcambre, as found in the blog post listed below:

http://deeperstory.com/grief-3-little-girls-and-god-somewhere/

Blog Post by Guy Delcambre: http://deeperstory.com/grief-3-little-girls-and-god-somewhere/