Recently, I’ve been struck by this methodical step-by-step process of life after loss. It feels like being in the middle of a house that has just crumbled and landed on top of you. You survived the collapse, but now, it’s time to get out from under the rubble.
First, you need to check your pulse. Somehow, you are alive. But do you feel the will to fight?
At this point, you may want to be a Marvel character with the ability to shoot from the base of the debris to high in the sky with a flash of technologically-advanced rocket fuel streaking behind you.
But this is real life. God is calling you to move one piece of rubble at a time. First, maybe it’s the dusty debris that’s settled on top of you. Then, it’s pieces of your broken life.
At some point, you hear the voice of someone from above the debris, asking if you’re in there. You say, “Yes,” but your voice is muffled. It doesn’t even sound like you. They communicate with you, and you both coordinate pushing and pulling a piece of large structural beam that was laying precariously perpendicular over two other smaller pieces that were unknowingly protecting you. They’ve helped you move the big pieces, but you realize you need to start taking the job on by yourself.
And so it goes, little by little. One day, you may feel like you’ve made headway when another load dumps onto you from a ledge high above. Ugh, you think. Will this ever be over?
Then, one day, you look around, and you’re standing. Nothing is laying on top of you anymore.. There is still the remnant of destruction around you, but you feel like you can breathe. And with that breath, you feel more empowered to take it on.
This week, I read a piece by Rachel Held Evans that echoes what God is calling you into during this process:
Death and resurrection. It’s the impossibility around which every other impossibility of the Christian faith orbits. Baptism declares that God is in the business of bringing dead things back to life, so if you want in on God’s business, you better prepare to follow God to all the rock-bottom, scorched-earth, dead-on-arrival corners of this world—including your own heart—because that’s where God works, that’s where God gardens.
Take a moment and answer the following questions:
- Where are you in the step-by-step, day-by-day process of grieving?
- Who has been calling your name from above the rubble?
- What is keeping you from seeing the sunlight above the debris?