The urge to write seems to be fading with time and distance from George’s day. It’s not that I don’t miss him terribly, because I do! But it’s more that I miss him and less that I mourn him. I’ll take that as a very good thing, even though it often feels like a very fine line that differentiates those emotions. I’m sure that as moments and occasions come upon us that remind us of the giant hole in our family, that desire (and it’s necessity) to write will be back in full force. It has always been one of the easiest ways for me to wrestle with God and through my feelings. It allows me to almost step out of the selfishness required by grief and look at it with objection. It makes me focus on God so that I can more clearly see the what’s and why’s behind the tears or shouts. I don’t always - or ever really - understand God’s timing or reasoning, but when I look to Him for comfort despite my attitude towards His plan, I always find the inexplicable joy of simply knowing and feeling His presence.
I heard someone talking about being a loss parent recently. It wasn’t a godly person or from any kind of spiritual perspective, it was just raw truth and logic. This woman said that when you lose a spouse you’re a widow. When you lose your parents you’re an orphan. But when you lose your child, there’s no word for that. - it’s amazing to me that in a world full of labels, for every kind of thing imaginable, there isn’t a word for parents who have lost children. Death happens. It’s expected. We know that our parents are going to die. We know that a marriage will end with one spouse burying the other. But there’s an order and expectation for those things. When you bury your child, death stifles your sense of normal and shakes up your expectations. It doesn’t have to rule you forever, but there’s no escaping the blender like mix up of everything you once thought would happen.
I’m thankful that I’m God’s child. I don’t know how I would have survived George Mason’s death otherwise. Because when my emotions and my reality were all shaken up and turned upside down, my God was a solid foundation on which I could stand. A foundation for me to climb on and navigate this new - and unfathomable - territory. And not only was He the very thing holding me above water, he was also the hand in my hand that was guiding me through despair, frustration, anger, sadness, doubt, anxiety, and any other number of sorrowful emotions, into the comfort of His wings and right back to the ultimate source of joy: Christ.
On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.