I have
known God and believed in Him for as long as I can remember. But it really was not until June of this past
year that our loving and personal God became truly present and real to me. And it turns out that the ideas I had about
how God relates to us were really quite different than how He actually chose to
make Himself known to me. For me, it
took a crisis moment, a horrific tragedy, a fall into a pit of despair deeper
than I had ever known, and a desperate cry for help in order to open my heart
to really receive His love. And it took other
believers, other women, those who willingly allowed themselves to be used as
God’s hands and feet here on earth to share God’s message of love to me.
On June 24th, 2016 my life fell apart. Our family, my husband of 15 years and our
two children, were living in Texas at the time.
My husband was stationed at Lackland AFB in San Antonio. That particular Friday morning, however, I
was here on the Central Coast, visiting family, when I received a phone call
from my husband’s squadron letting me know that he had not come in to work that
morning. When I tried calling his cell phone
and could not reach him either, worry began to take hold. You see, my Ryan had been battling both
depression and PTSD for several years, as a result of some very stressful
military assignments. So knowing he
fought some internal battles on a daily basis, my heart immediately hurt for
him and I began to worry that today was perhaps a day that was too much for him
to handle.
As the
minutes ticked by and still no contact could be made, my worry began to change
into a deep panic. His military squadron
was refusing to give me any details, other than that the police were now
involved, also trying to locate my husband.
I then received a text from my beloved Ryan that said “I love you,
Jenny,” followed by a silence so deafening that I knew my world was beginning
to crash down all around me. Soon after
that two uniformed military officers arrived at the door of my parents’ house,
where I was staying. And like some slow
motion scene from a movie, they began to tell me that my husband had taken his
own life. My Ryan, who was supposed to
be here in California in just two days to visit family with us, was now suddenly
gone. Just gone. At the time, these words being spoken to me
were more than I could comprehend.
For those
of you who have unexpectedly lost a loved one, you know the intense shock that
can come with sudden grief. That morning
had begun as a normal morning, me playing with my children in my parent’s
backyard - and then within a matter of hours, I was suddenly spiraling down
into a state of numbness and shock – a physical, emotional, and spiritual despair. Those next few weeks are still a bit of a blur
to me; they were filled with funeral details, Air Force survivor briefings,
phone calls, visitors, and unending tears.
I was unable to keep food down for several weeks, subsisting only on
sips of smoothies. Horrific nightmares
kept me from any real sleep. My whole
body was shutting down and, to be honest, I was okay with it. With my beloved husband gone, I truly did not
want to live anymore. This was just too
hard, this was too big for me. I couldn’t
open my Bible and I was not able to utter any prayer, other than a desperate
whispering of “Jesus, help me,” over and over again in the middle of the
night. I knew sorrow
was completely consuming me, I knew my children needed me, and I knew seeking
God was my only hope, but I did not have the strength to seek Him. My shock and my grief were that overwhelming.
Others
said things to me like, “the pain won’t always be this bad” or “in time the
grief will lessen.” But I missed Ryan
with such a deep ache that I could not even fathom a day when despair would not
completely consume me. If there was
indeed going to be a day when the pain of my sorrow would lessen, it was SO far
out in the future that, for me, it offered no comfort and no hope at all. How would I possibly survive the long road
from where I currently was to some kind of future healing? Psalm 13:1 says, “How long, Lord? How
long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my
heart?” That was exactly where I was at.
It
was then, in the weeks that followed, that the children and I made plans to
stay and eventually move here to Lompoc, where we have family. I knew, in my weakness, I needed others to pray
for me through the grief and that transition.
One of those praying friends mentioned the GriefShare group here at
Trinity. I came in here, to this
sanctuary, on a Sunday in August, without hope and unable to see an end to my
pain. I had visited five other churches
between the time of Ryan’s death and my visit here. This church was the first place where I was
met at the door with hugs. You all
embraced me and welcomed me that Sunday with Christ’s love, not even knowing
the pain and hopelessness in my heart – a pain that was barely hidden behind
the fragile façade of my attempted smile.
I
joined the GriefShare program that Wednesday, just two months after my Ryan’s
death. And discovered that I did not
have to find the strength to sift through my Bible for God’s promises, because the
GriefShare group put the verses and prayers right in front of me – all I had to
do was read them. And as I read God’s promises
of comfort and David’s Psalms of lament and as I prayed for healing and some
kind of relief from the pain, God made Himself present.
Psalm
34:18 says “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are
crushed in spirit.” The Bible does not
say we will not suffer here on earth or that our hearts will not be broken, but
it does say that God’s presence is made known to those who are crushed. He draws nearest to those with broken hearts
and He provides the hope. The biggest
lesson I have learned in my grief journey is that I do not have to wait for time
to ease my pain or for my sorrow to just go away, but instead, pain and hope
can actually coexist. In fact, sorrow
and joy can even coexist. God's comfort
becomes an ever-present source of strength.
I read somewhere that a broken heart, busted wide open, best allows
God’s love to flow inside and then outward to embrace others in pain. And that is a truth that, before grief, I had
never felt.
You
see, God can use brokenness. Grief is
the price of love and its pain can be transformative, if we allow God full
access to every part of it. When we have
a broken heart, we can do one of two things – we can let it scab over and
harden, or we can embrace and share our tender woundedness. Our gut reaction,
and what the world often teaches us, is to toughen up, put our chins up, move
on. But I think God calls us to embrace our wounds. Ezekiel 36:26 says, "I will give
you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart
of stone and give you a heart of flesh."
A hardened heart may not feel pain, but it also does not feel joy. It is my experience that intense pain can
actually make it possible to feel other emotions more strongly as well,
including love, joy, and empathy. In this broken and hurting world,
our loving and gracious God has figured out a way to take our brokenness, our
hurts, our deepest pains, and use them to shower us with the deepest joys.
I
think that if my Ryan had shared the brokenness that he felt in his heart, if
he had allowed others to know the pain and turmoil that his depression and PTSD
had caused, there would have been a way to save his life. When we share our brokenness with each other,
we allow God’s love to flow into our hearts and then outward to comfort others.
2
Corinthians 12:9 says that God’s grace is sufficient for us, that His power is made perfect
in our weakness. And Paul says he will boast all the
more gladly about his weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on him. It is not always comfortable to share our
brokenness, but letting others see how much we need each other and letting God’s
strength work through us is beautiful.
It’s much more beautiful than seeing someone who appears to have it all
put together in their own strength. We
are not called on to be strong – we are called to love kindness and to walk
humbly with our God; to lie our brokenness at his feet. In the pain of my grief, I was beginning to see
hope through those promises. Reflecting on God's love did
not instantly remove my sorrow, but it did begin to ease my pain by directing
my eyes towards the one who gives hope.
Just as Psalm 130:5 says, "I wait for the Lord, my whole being
waits, and in his word I put my hope."
And with such a raw, tender heart, I was more perceptive of God's still
small voice. With such a great need for comfort, I was expectant of His
presence.
Without Ryan by my side, I had been brought, suddenly
and painfully, to my knees in such a way that I had nothing left, but to seek
Him. And as I sought Him, he sought me back. With comfort.
Psalm
51:16 says "My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a
broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise." There is a joy that comes from God’s healing
presence, even in midst of sorrow. Joy
and sorrow can coexist. Every time an
overwhelming wave of grief returns to me, as they so often do, and I am able to focus on Him who finds
it a joy to strengthen me, I am giving Him glory. The weaker I am, the more I give Him to work
with. And, goodness, God has had a whole
lot to work with in my life these past few months. But
seeing the joy of God at work, brings a peace that
I never knew existed. So if I can share
one thing with you, it is that I urge you to not to be afraid of showing, or as
Paul says, boasting, about your weaknesses. And then let’s all love kindness enough
to create safe places to be weak in front of each other. I found that at GriefShare and I know I desperately
needed that. I bet some of you do
too. Creating safe places for each other
is our way of letting God do His job.
If it was
not for those precious others – my friends, my family, and those at GriefShare
- who allowed their hearts to break with mine and then allowed an outpouring of
God’s healing love to flow through them, towards me, I would not have realized
how intimately our God ministers to our hearts.
We need each other, we need our hearts to break wide open for each other. My prayer, and I
ask you all to pray over me, is that as I learn to transform my thoughts about
Ryan from pain to remembering him with joyful memories, that I never stop
actively seeking the one who performs that healing transformation. And that as my heart continues to heal, that
it does not harden or forget, but that it stays tender and raw so that God will
use it, to His glory, to show comfort to others.
