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Friday’s Faith
Spiritual Train-Wreck
(part two)
I am changed. I am a different person. I’m starting to get it… (I know; I’m slow. How could I have been so blind?!) The death of my child, as horrendous as it…is...has been…and will be…over the years, it has also given me something.
Merry Katherine’s death has done something for me that I am not sure would have happened any other way. I think God would put this gift in the category of “Treasures of Darkness” He gives to the hurting, weak, bereaved, to all those of us who are down-and-out. God—through my child's death—has opened my eyes…
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In a nutshell, what has happened as I begin to find God’s “Treasures of Darkness”…
Watchman Nee describes such an experience like mine as, in essence...until you’ve been taken to the cross in every part of your life—ALL of yourself, every part of you, to die on that cross—your motivations are suspect; all you have to offer to God is tainted with your “power,” your fleshly contributions that actually only serve to get in God’s way. With my child's death, I have been taken to the cross; every part of me has been nailed to that cross, for example, my child died, I died, my career died, my friend-relationships died, many of my family-relationships died, my “kingdom” here on this earth died, my dreams for the future died.
Instead of Alice going to Wonderland, or Dorothy going to Oz, Angie left glory (the glory of her former life), and went to the cross…to die!
The opposite of the happily-ever-after fairy tales, and yet I am at peace with my Lord! Bringing more joy-in-my-spirit than any magical endings to a Disney movie. And I have been moved out of the way, and God can move! Glory – His glory can shine and can move through me, and love through me to other people who are like me…who are also hanging on their cross—of loss, and pain, and hurt, and grief.
What sweeter place in the world would I rather be than with the other precious mothers and daddies who have been stripped bare, down to nothing, like me. Just pure, raw hearts, aching and longing, yet also tender, and vulnerable, and kind.
I am developing whole new sets of friends, beautiful souls, beautiful hearts stripped bare because of a depth of love for their child that when their child died, their lives too, have…stopped. And we meet one another and share that love with one another. In a safe place. In a place where we are understood. In a place where people care. In a place where people genuinely hurt for you. In a place where we compatriots simply “get it.”
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Next week, I will show you some of the new stones I am discovering within my “Spiritual Train-Wreck” that are rocking my world as they begin to make sense of my life as a Christian in the new light of my child’s death, and my death-wracked life.
Thank you for continuing on this painful journey with me and Merry Katherine’s daddy as we sort through the wreckage to find our very foundation—our spiritual groundedness—that we so sorely need to continue to walk through Grief’s never-ending “Trail of Tears”…
Please watch for Friday's Faith - Spiritual Train-Wreck (part three)!
Watchman Nee, Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things
