harps//strings

Grief has us emptied, but moving. Tired, but alive. Broken, but humbled. At the very end of this road, I find my eyes once again fixed on the One that received my anger and wrath. At the very end, I find worth in it. Something that is pure and something that needed to be extracted. But there is more to go. Much like the middle of the journey, I know there is still so much more. But I am able to breathe again. This ‘center’ was where I stopped and took in all that God had to offer. What little I can take in my lungs, I am grateful. One does not know how important breathing is until they no longer can. So I take this chance to take a painful deep breath. One that I have not had the luxury of having in a very long time and one that I have denied myself even more. For the first time in a long time, I allow myself to receive it. And as painful as it is, my lungs thank me for the much-needed air.

We can keep going. We can keep walking.

But how far have we come and how far can we still go? I ask for myself and for friends. In this break, which is neither joyous nor sorrowful, we are present. It is, in the truest sense of the saying, a breather. A moment to stand, both empty and bare.

I am here with most of my questions still unanswered, but I am alive. Rumors of the Son of Man are no longer rumors. I remember how true it was and still is. My doubts disappear for a brief and precious moment and this reprieve, however quickly it may end up being, is here. I will take it because I am finding that my anger and thirst for justice were all taken. I am in no short supply, but it continues to be taken from me; constantly and consistently. And now, enough has been taken for my vision to clear. Even if for a brief moment, I can see. And my desire for revenge is satisfied in Him.

Grief, I think, is an outpouring. A form of praise that can only come from loss. A violent acknowledgment that things in this world are broken and unfair. That it does not play by the rules. That it was not supposed to be this way. Maybe in this outpouring, grief begins to teach us that it was never okay; that it was never good. And that He is.

Maybe anger, in its purest form, may also be holy. He certainly experiences it with us, just as He did when the tables were turned. Just as He did when death entered through a single act of rebellion. Just as He sees the loss we see now. But in His perfect anger, He moves to restore things. Medicine. 

Man, on the other hand, falls victim to his own twisted poison. An overdose of something that was far truer than anything we ever knew. I am finding that anger, in this earthly realm, comes impulsively. It is quick to compare and breeds petty jealousy. It is imperfectly harsh and indiscriminately difficult. It knows not who it aims its arrows toward and is impatient enough to still shoot them. It is always, most certainly, self-destructive. What was a salve or something more cathartic before, is now just another link in a chain that binds. The possible byproduct of freedom and choice. One that was apparently worth it to Him. So much so, that He bet His life on it. 

But as I said, His anger restores, and maybe, His anger also unbinds. Perhaps it restores us enough to see that it is actually a call to arms to face brokenness itself. A declaration of war that He himself commits to and a war that He intends on finishing. Perhaps it is also a song to sing. A song for us to find our way back home.

Maybe our anger is the only worthy offering we can give at the moment. The only thing we are capable of right now. Maybe it is the only one that matters to Him in this season. Surely, a reluctant hand that reaches and stumbles in the dark is still a hand that is trying. So I will gladly reach, I will gladly stumble, and I will gladly give.

And being who He is, He gladly receives. Simply because He can.

Grief, it seems, is also our declaration to be rescued from ourselves, a lowering of our thorny crowns of self-hatred. A releasing of our poison to another. Anger is often our prayer and God gladly lowers Himself to receive and answer it. The main issue with anger, after all, is that it only dissipates when it strikes. Is it not wisdom, then, that He chose fragility with the intention of being broken; that He would receive our lowered poisonous crowns? His body and His blood in remembrance of the wrongful wrath we once held so close, all taken. Is it not love that allowed our anger to strike down divinity?

I ask and ponder. A right Man, the most right of us all, unrightfully took the blame. All so we would have a chance at clarity. A moment when our tear-filled eyes are wiped clean, given a chance at a reprieve from a punishment we often put on ourselves and on others. Perhaps to show us where anger should be rightfully aimed. To show us a ‘right’ anger, if one existed.

So, what is left when it is all taken from us and taken into Himself? What is left in the silent aftermath? Grief has redirected our anger and exchanged it for a precious breath. Warped wrath for a vision of a perfected one, filtered through the breaking of the eternal. The answer seems to lie in something rather ordinary, but honest. It is not something complicated or bewildering, but it is both easy and difficult. At times, it is offensive. And if it is offensive, it is only because of how restrained it presents itself. How unobtrusive and mundane it is. 

With our anger spent, I believe we can only do one thing. In fact, I suspect that it’s all He really asks of us. It is the simple act of breathing. An inhale of peace and an exhale of relief. After all, breathing is the purest act of just being and that is the hardest thing to do at times like these. Maybe, the most painful thing. But I allow myself to take a breath, just as we all should when we get to this place. 

I breathe and I am reminded, it was a breath that gave life to earth and clay. A breath that took Him out of the tomb. In all the anger and frustrating mystery of it all, I am affirmed by one thought: that a breath will take us out of ours. He walked out with all of His wounds and scars and He kept them all as if to say it all matters.