Walking with a limp

Almost three weeks ago, about, my mother died.  She had lived a rich 80 years, and though her death was unexpected in many ways, she went as she had most hoped (though I had tried for years to warn her we don’t get to choose, in the end, she did!), quietly in bed, not waking up from a night of sleep.  I have entrusted her to the arms of the Father.

But it leaves me with another part of the scaffolding of life now taken away.  Though I did not talk with her on a daily basis, I have found myself thinking of her nightly – after the kids are in bed, when the house is quiet except for the noise I make to fill it.  She alone in my family understood by experience that quietness, and the sorrow that comes with it – and I would call her at times, knowing that she would want to talk as much as I needed to (it was never a short conversation with mom…)  I feel more alone than ever in this world…

It just came out of my mouth yesterday, “I guess I feel like the Lord wants me to walk with more of a limp than I am comfortable with…”  Grief taps into deeper grief, and I find myself back in the valley rather than working on moving ahead and rebuilding a life.  Hope for the distant future is clear, but present hope, hope for the next year to be better than this, hope that I will actually see and taste that the Lord is good in this life – what I had been working towards and hoping in – seems to have slipped through my grasp again, evaporating to be found only on the far horizons. 

I preached a Christmas eve sermon about Immanuel, God with us.  I know it is true.  I can see how it is a wonderful truth – but it was hard to preach with conviction, when I feel so alone.  Even the best days are shaded with this truth.  And the worst days – well, I just go to bed early and hope that the next day will be better.  And they usually are. 

I want to be able to finish this on a solid note – that God has come to be with us.  That He is with me, now, even as I write this post about how alone I feel.  And I assent to this truth, but it brings not comfort but tears, not assurance but more sorrow.  I trust He is there…but I don’t feel Him there.  

I read a blog post today – a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a woman who had lost her husband to cancer in the past two years.  She posted about not writing – not since August – and why that was, and giving an update.  I found it comforting, oddly familiar.  Life is working.  God is still true.  But it is small, and it is so hard to hope for more when the loss has been compounded by loss after loss – the loss of the life we had worked to build, the loss of hopes and dreams of life and ministry together, the loss of companionship and daily partnership, the loss of affection and the knowledge that to one person I am loved and cherished, the loss of my mom, the loss of identity and a sense of purpose, the loss of clarity for a future direction and calling.  The loss of joy at Christmas…