Our friend Katherine received sad news this week. A beloved nephew, who came into this world fighting for his life, died unexpectedly after a year of living in this world. Another young mother in our community buried her little baby boy this week after weeks of extraordinary efforts to help him live. Her husband was a state trooper killed in a routine road stop shortly after the baby’s birth. All over this sad old world mamas cry for their babies who die before they can grow up. My heart cannot imagine the depth and breath of this grief... the one who birthed life must stand and watch as life leaves.
In my journaling reading this morning, I found the following passage written by Reeve Lindbergh, daughter of Anne Morrow Lindberg:
When I lost my first son just before his second birthday, she who had also lost her first son (who was killed by a kidnapper) knew what to say, and she was one of the few people I was willing to listen to. She told me the truth first.... “This horror will fade. I can promise you that. The horror fades. The sadness, though, is different. The sadness remains.
That, too, was correct. The horror faded. I left it behind me in that terrible winter, but the sadness remained. Gradually, over the years, it became a member of my family, like our old dog, sleeping in the corners...
At the time of my son’s death, when I asked my mother what would happen to me as the mother of the child, how that part of me would continue, she said, “It doesn’t. You die, that’s all. That part of you dies with him. And, then, amazingly, you are reborn...”
Rebirth... Jesus told Nicodemus he needed to be reborn into the Kingdom of Heaven, a physical impossibility from Nicodemus’ point of view. And yet, how else can we become a grown up in God’s family without the rebirth that comes through suffering and loss? Until I lost someone of great value to me in a senseless death, knew the feelings of grief and anger and guilt that come with the amputation of a part of ourselves, I was so firmly attached to this world and my own limited God reality, I was unable to see and hear and feel God in the deep dark shadows of my soul. Now I know that in the darkest hours of grief and loss,in the dark caves where I weep and wail, God is there waiting for me. As I move through my fears and griefs, God waits and like a good midwife, assists my rebirth into the land of the living. Suffering can be transformed.
Alchemy... one dictionary definition is a mysterious or paradoxical process. It is in the suffering that comes with the loss of what we hold dear, the death of those we love, that we can find new life and release from the fear of dying. It is the letting go that lets us grasp again, hold fast to the new life that follows the old. Jesus said we must be willing to lose our lives, give up all we have, in order to save our lives. How I wish that did not include letting go of babies who have not yet had enough time to live! But it does. And it includes young mothers and fathers who die from illness and war, old mothers and fathers who die, loss of sight and mobility and hearing, all that diminishes and reduces us. We can live with the hurt, feel it deep in our bones, face it and bring it into the Light where it can be warmed and reborn... new life, not the same life, but a new life where griefs and sorrows have transformed us into the grown up children of God. Like God, in whose image we are being formed all the days of our lives, we can now feel the suffering of others and choose to wait with them in the darkness, silent witnesses to the new life that can come from death. O God, be with Katherine’s niece and Michaela as they wait for the hurt to heal. Be with all those who are struggling with grief and loss this day. Help us to wait in the darkness with them, holding them close, being the Body of Christ for them as they wait on resurrection and rebirth. Amen
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