A lot of times, Non-Christians think that being a Christian immunizes you from feeling hurt or pain or grief.
Unfortunately, being a Christian doesn’t prevent me from feeling all of those emotions. I still cry and scream and yell. I still feel my heart ache.Sometimes, in the deepest despair, it’s hard for me to even find God or his purpose.
But then I remind myself that God doesn’t prevent pain or grief. Those are sadly unavoidable parts of life that are not His to take away. What he can offer us though is a way through those difficult times.
He provides shoulders on which to cry. He sets in motion events that remind us of joy. He surrounds us with His warm embrace, reminding us that no matter what happens He will always walk with us.
Take for example, my experience with my grandmother last weekend.
My family and I spent our weekend helping her pack up my great grandmother’s house. As many of you know, my great grandmother past away almost a year ago. From her early 20s up until when she died at 100, she lived in a house that my great grandfather helped to build.
That house was her pride and joy. The one thing she refused to give up even at the very end.
My grandmother grew up there. My father and his brother and sisters grew up there after their father past away. My brothers and I grew up playing in that backyard and helping in the kitchen. And my grandmother moved back into that house in her 70s to help take care of my great grandmother.
Needless to say that house holds more memories and sentimental value for our family than I could ever begin to explain.
I knew that it was going to be a hard weekend. In a lot of ways, this was our final goodbye to my great grandmother because even though she was gone when I spent time in that house I could still feel her around.
But the house had to be sold and we all had to move on. I fully expected for me, my Mom and my grandmother to spend the whole weekend in tears.
But amazingly, there was only one moment of sadness amongst all the commotion. And even in that moment of sadness, I could feel the Holy Spirit at work.
I spent most of Saturday morning helping to pack up the rest of the kitchen. I
A few hours later, after we had the moving boxes packed away in the moving van, we all stopped for a lunch break. At this time, my grandmother reached into her cupboard for a mug for her tea, only to realize that I had pack away everything. Unbeknownst to me, she had actually planned on staying their a few more nights and wanted to keep some of the china out to use.
When she couldn’t find the mug, she immediately burst into an uncontrollable sob, the worst that I had ever seen. I, of course, felt terrible. But I also knew it wasn’t about the mug. For her, it was the realization that we had truly moved her out of the comfort of the house where she spent well over half of her life.
As she stood hunched over the kitchen counter bawling, my Mom and I rushed over to comfort her and we all started to cry. It was the collective release of all of our souls, as we came to grips with saying goodbye to a treasured place and an irreplaceable woman.
Soon, my nephew heard her crying and came over to give her a hug. When she felt his touch, she immediately started to smile and stopped crying. He always has a way with her like that.
As she collected her thoughts, she said “You know I need to do that every once in awhile. It’s good for me to get it all out.”
In that moment, I knew that it was all the workings of God. He knew that she needed to release all her pent up grief and that she needed our comfort to do it. The cathartic release of each salty drop let all of us shed a layer of the sadness and hurt that was draping over our hearts.
We weren’t crying because God wasn’t with us, we were crying because He knew that’s what we needed.
God knows that even the most devout Christians need a good cry session every now and then. It doesn’t mean that we lost Him. It means that we recognize that we have to express every emotion, even the darkest ones, to fully appreciate the beauty of this life.
As this story demonstrates, in those dark moments, God is always trying to find a way to walk with us, even if it’s through other people. So even though I cry and I grieve, I know that God will always find a way to ease the burden and comfort my soul.
