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Friday's Faith
What Is Exposed In Grief's "Perfect Storm"?
Love is revealed by actions! People can SAY they love you, but if you look at their actions, you see the harsh contrast and say to yourself, "Yes I hear the words, but how was I treated?"
Looking back, we've had discussions of this bizarre phenomenon because of interactions with different family members since the death of our beloved child. Yes, certain family members can say they love us off and on all day long; they can "say" it verbally, but their actions reveal a cruelty beyond belief! Because our love for them is so deep, it stabs us very deeply. While we are at our most vulnerable, they pierce the knife straight through our hearts with their unthinkable cruelty shown in their vilest of actions.
It's like a perfect storm is created: We are trying to survive and are barely functioning, but they treat us with a deprecating attitude of, "There's nothing wrong with you!" (when there's going to be something wrong with us for the rest of our lives…!)
So at our weakest, they seem to become threatened by such weakness and literally want to kill us. Like a predator smelling blood by sensing the weakness exposed from the depth of our love for our child that has been cut off at the knees, these predators seem to come roaring out of the pit of hell into the sacred halls of our love for our lost child, and spew the fiery venom of their hate and disgust that burns even deeper holes into our already death-accosted hearts.
It is as if they look at everything we do or cannot do through their own self-serving lens and deprecate us with their most degrading aspersions against our character.
It's as if the deep love for our deceased child in all its purity and depth of heart and soul serves as a beautiful white backdrop that easily exposes the contrasting tarry black hatred that spirals up out of the pit of their dark souls.
We've never seen anything like it. Some family members come through in the most loving ways we could EVER have imagined while other family members seem compelled to show the BLACKNESS of their hearts that we NEVER even realized had been there, at least to the depths that we now see.
One of the supposed advantages of doing counseling from a Christian perspective is that we know what "normal" is. The beauty of Christianity is that you know what "Love" is. The Bible gives you the exact definition of what "love" is.
This is what love is.
This is what love looks like. We are actually told what love looks like.
But when we look at certain members of our families, in this perfect storm of our vulnerability and their most daring blatant show of hostility and sold-out narcissism, we can exclaim to ourselves,
"And This is what LOVE is NOT!!!
~~~~~
1 Corinthians 13
New King James Version (NKJV)
The Greatest Gift
13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
~~~
13
And so faith, hope, love abide
[faith—conviction and belief respecting man's relation to God and divine things;
hope—joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation;
love—true affection for God and man, growing out of God's love for and in us]
these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13, Amplified Version
Graphics, thanks to ~Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, ~Hers to Treasure, and ~Dr. Joanne Cacciatore
