:: waves ::

More than a few times the last five months I've heard the analogy of grief being like waves in an ocean.

Most of the time waves don't cause harm; surfers love them, right?, and beach-walkers are amazed when, after a rougher night at sea, waves bring in all sorts of shells and stones that can be collected at high tide. They may sweep away all sorts of beach play-toys into the expanse of the ocean, but unless a major tropical storm or hurricane is posing imminent danger, I'd say most people kind of enjoy watching and listening to the crash...crash...crash, against the sand and their own toes too. (My husband personally thinks that waves are essential for a good beach day, as he's not much for reading and drinking an iced tea on the beach: give him a boogie board and a high surf index!)

I'm so there, though...in a season where grief has crashed into me like ocean into earth, and there are times when I just LOATHE those crashings-into-me.

Why?

I think so much of it is because it's so random...and nothing in me is prepared for raw grief, something I'd wish upon no one because it just hurts. so. much.

A woman I met a few months ago at a spiritual retreat center told me a story about a friend's daughter who was traveling in a beautiful part of Italy and posing along a picture-perfect ledge. In an instant the ocean turned violent and a giant wave swept her from the ledge into the vastness of the sea. She was killed instantly from injuries sustained from the lashing-out of an ocean at war.

In my default mode, so much in me wants to run from the randomness of life; of grieving, to run away to somewhere warm and pretend as if nothing has happened and life will be normal again.

Those sorts of stories, of literal and emotional waves crashing into someone's life, hit much closer to home now. Months prior to Dad's death they touched me in a unique way, yet I had no context for them, really, and they scared the hell out of me. As months have gone by, however, I'm beginning to learn at a heart-level that I can't run from my circumstances, from the waves that crash into my heart with such spontaneity and the capacity of taking my breath away. Instead I must embrace them, digging deeper into the loss as it comes, because somehow the healing begins there. I must run full-force into those waves of sadness, holding tighter than ever to God's heart for those who mourn: to His heart for me, His daughter adopted through the blood of Jesus; no longer an orphan, but a child.

...and that sort of love,
that sort of gift poured out on the Cross,
is anything BUT random.

And so I trust, step by step, leaning into Jesus as I lean into the waves:

"What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace when my Lord is near,
leaning on the everlasting arms."

:: walls fall down ::

If ever I could be thankful for information withheld from me, somehow I am. Allow me to explain.

I cried out that evening: Avi met, "My father has died!", and immediately began to make phone calls, first to those who needed to know and those who knew only me and not my father but who journey alongside me day-to-day here in Columbus. Uttering only a few words to each person on the other line, Avi met is all I could say, and most friends on the other end of the line were speechless. I can't blame them; life was so normal one hour prior to my phone call, for me and for them.

I think the normalcy of the hours prior to those hours of hell, the suddenness of it all, made for the shock to settle in immediately. And so it did, and I believed immediately that I could "get through this."

Several people did share that information with me in the first days, although not in its fullness.

Honestly, I didn't understand what they were talking about, these words about life getting harder when we'd return home to Columbus. I figured it had to be the truth, but couldn't grasp how "difficult" would take on a whole new meaning; how even a dramatic word like "devastating" can't depict how awful death really is.

I find myself there now, three months later, camped out and searching for words to share about the rawness of grief. I'm a writer, you see, and I should have eloquent words! But there are none, and Hallmark-ing death doesn't feel good anyway.

The walls are falling down now.

Yet somehow I'm safe in the arms of Jesus, even as I throw my arms in the air and honestly believe that God has abandoned me.

And so as I bolt past Father's Day cards this week and recycle the weekly flyers advertising "the best gifts for the best dad", I'm thankful that on March 14, I couldn't handle this pain, but was given grace for each moment...and kept walking.

This week, I will keep walking, simply believing that God loves me and cares. On March 13 those words would have seemed simple and trite; now I must cling to them.

The beginning

Avi met.

In Hebrew it means: My father died. Three of the most painful words in the vocabulary of humankind. No explanations, no theory, no formulas can lessen the pain we experience. We have lost our father, and that is one of life's profoundest losses. For some of us, the death of a father is life's deepest insult. It reminds us of our own vulnerability. Only those who die before their father escape these feelings and saying these words. (On Grieving the Death of a Father, 20)

My heart feels as though as it will leap out of my chest as I write this first post, yet another something I hadn't anticipated. Just over two months ago I couldn't have imagined uttering those words: Avi met. Yet from our north Clintonville apartment on that Sunday evening they came pouring from my lips, just as my body collapsed into the floor. Avi met.

And so my story begins there, with those raw words that no other sugar-coated term for death can capture. This is the story that I'd never thought to own at age 23, just about to cross the two-year anniversary of my marriage. At that very moment, Avi met, I immediately sensed life was about to change in a profound way, as if a whole new novel - not just a chapter - was being written.

So the journey begins here, with tears streaming down my cheeks, faithful friends by my side, and a God whose own faithfulness somehow hasn't changed, even as we've begun our trek into the valley of the shadow of death. Will you journey with me?