harps//strings

Memories are seldom reliable. They are unstable and crack at the slightest touch. We tend to forget the details and facts. An exaggeration for the sake of storytelling. Oftentimes, it even becomes something that resembles fiction more than truth. However, I believe grief is one of the very few things on this side of existence that keeps memories true and pure. 

Grief may be our permission and grace to remember. 

I am finding that people just entering grief see things with more logic than emotion, at least initially. We enter absorbing every detail and information, much like someone learning a new passion. That, we can also assume, is a very similar thing. It is indeed very possible that passion and grief may have more in common than we originally thought. Both cultivate deep understanding and knowledge of whatever it sets their eyes on. And both plant, and water, and sow deep love and appreciation for its subjects. In fact, grief may just be a passion for the things taken from us. 

Both are carefully grown and not just handed to us. However, passion usually gives us the luxury of choice whereas grief does not. Grief rarely bothers introducing itself before it barges in, much like a thief in the night. Only mere moments after a loss does it come banging at our doors, desperate to be let in. However, Jesus himself once described His coming to that of a thief and, in that story, it is to ultimately impart and give. So I wonder if this thief, as obtrusive as it is, means to do the same? 

Maybe Grief is one of His many names. But first, let us ask the burning questions. 

Why is grief obtrusive? Why does it barge in when it is often unwanted, often unexpectedly? And why does it do this in the most inappropriate way? We certainly have been taught that emotions are a form of weakness. That it is an illness not to be spread. Whether we like it or not, none of us are spared from that judgment man has put on himself. We have certainly made strides in breaking this tall fortress down, but fragments in the foundation still remain. Mental health and wellness, for example, are the modern-day lepers. A little more elegant in its judgment and a little more subtle in its discrimination. But we also see the Son of Man heal now as He did back then. Is it not quite possible, then, that healing may come through piercing grief? That this is what will dismantle what is left of that fortress? Man, after all, has a habit of running from pain. It is an evolutionary trait passed down for survival. We have made it to where we are, in part, because we have an innate tendency to run. So the question is, why is grief a thing we seem to be forced to face? We certainly still have the choice to engage it or not, but grief certainly has the advantage of patience and persistence. 

A passion to be learned I suppose. Indeed, It forces us to face the facts when we have no desire to. We absorb and we take in everything. Every minutia and spec of detail around us. We do not have the benefit of hindsight yet and we cannot look back and see, but surely, would we not say this was a bittersweet gift? Because we were complicit with that thief called ‘grief’, it seems we now have clarity where it normally would not exist. A certain crispness to the memories. We learn to see the true value in the thing we lost, much like passion toward things we still have. Like fire, it burns away everything we thought important in light of it. Those things that so occupied our minds and emotions – things that dim what was truly bright. It allows us to let rise the things we once forgot and see the true worth of everything. We thought ‘this’ was not important, but grief assures us that ‘it’ is.

It is a painful process to be sure, but all passions usually are. Love and passion usually are interchangeable in this context as passion is just love refined. One does not love because it is all just good. One loves entirely or it is not love at all. After all, no one leaves a hobby simply because it requires of our discipline. And a wife does not leave her husband simply on a whim because he snores, nor a husband because his wife ‘nags’. We choose love because we see that even the “good” and “bad” are ultimately good. That it is all important. In fact, it is what often completes and brings fullness to the experience, doesn’t it?

Much in the same way, grief tells us what is truly important and good if we choose to listen, doing away with the dross. 

But it is annoying and, at times, unexpectedly aggressive in its pursuit. But that too is also a quality of Jesus is it not? He, too, persistently challenges and asks us to choose the harder thing. And healing is almost always the harder thing. Contrary to what we have been told and taught, healing requires of us courage and strong will. Much like redemption, healing is not for the faint of heart. 

So, what is grief? At the very least, it etches within us a purity of memory, precise and constant. One that is rarely spoken of but often experienced. Pain that is sometimes needed and is often contrary to the world. At most, it is a gift of remembering value, seen from a lens far greater than our own. A value for the things that are unseen. 

Christ, I believe, saw grief and said yes to its knock. Christ, I believe, moved because of it. And we know what that move did. 

Slowly, I am finding that experiencing grief fully and completely is what will get me to move. Slowly, I am realizing how permanent grief truly is only in this lifetime. We tend to have things stir in us. Enough to move inches, maybe feet. But rarely is that stirring enough to move us completely. Not without cultivation. Not until it becomes a passion. Grief, it seems, is the catalyst. Enough to make a change from temporary to sustainable. To shift and preserve our gaze to see things as He does. To ultimately remind us that it is all important. In that sense, maybe we touch a little bit of heaven. A glimpse of true permanence. Another step toward fullness.