Loss

Grief is left over love. It lingers with us long after we loose someone or something. The love we have becomes so deeply rooted within us. We can’t stop loving them, but the expression of love still wells up within us. We ache. We ache to pour that love out into them. Our bodies mourn the inability to do so. Grieving reminds us of the loss we are experiencing. That it is true. That we are without something that was once so strong. That the love within was bold, vibrant, worthy, and truly valuable. We may feel grief long after a relationship, a friendship that is ended, or the loss of someone we love. There is something that person brought us that has now been broken from us. Closeness, accessibility, intimacy, presence. It’s natural for us to feel that absence, for once the gift was so good and so worthy of our time and investment. We carry losses within us, and over time they transform into gratitude. We surrender the hurt and absence into true thanksgiving that we once held a very beautiful gift. Christ understands our ache, and chose to embody it. He went to the pillar for scourging. God chose the pain of being broken open so that we could be consoled when we were broken open. He carried the wood up the hill, pain searing through his body. He wanted us to know that God understands and empathizes with us when the pain sears through our bodies and our hearts. He fell, hard, three times in the journey. He rushes to our side when we fall, hard. He mourns with us when it feels like the cross is crushing and too heavy to bear. He was pierced. He knew the world would pierce our hearts and that we would experience grief and loss and death. And He whispers, me too. Me too. His Mother held him in his arms. She knew we would need held too, in the deaths that life provides. That we are often in dire need of her consolation. He was in a tomb. He saw our tendency to live in tombs and ached for us to live lives that were free. Christ was resurrected. He knew we would also be restored. That grief would not consume our lives, but lead us into new life and into freedom. Grief reminds us that the loss was true, and Christ consoles us until we are ready to be restored.