harps//strings

When is it okay to move on? Here we are, at the very edge of a new day. We see a small glimpse of the sun just peeking over the horizon line. It sprinkles the land with detail and light. What was blurry and without form begin to take its rightful shape. Colors awaken from their deep slumber to paint the landscape. Our eyes have been well adjusted to the night and this, too, will take some getting used to. It keeps moving with or without us and in a matter of minutes, that light will soon bathe us with its warm kindness and reprieve from the night. Yet, a feeling often shows itself. One that only comes right before the finish line. A deep sense of guilt. Guilt that we might forget the things we have lost. A pull to stay in the dark and cold.

Maybe because it has been our home for so long. Maybe because it is the home we think we deserve. 

In many ways, darkness is what we deserve. Guilt is often honest in its assessment. Punishment was placed on God when it should have been on us. We have no right to leave this wilderness. We should stay where we are. It is our responsibility. 

It was our loss, so it is forever ours to keep. 

No one else should have the burden. It is just and it is fair. When there is no one to pay the cost, is it not ours to bear? Who else should receive the punishment of our anger and bitterness but us? Who else could? Surely not an innocent. Guilt deems us guilty and it is right in its verdict.

But I have a suspicion that guilt is the last dying breath of an undone plan. A persisting lie that clings to us as tightly as it can. The best lies are half-truths after all, and half-truths are much easier to swallow than whole ones. It seems to me that it is a last resort. One to keep us where we are. But doesn’t that imply we are moving forward, even if by inches? Precious progress.

Grief, I think, never really allows us to stay. With all I personally believe grief to be, I do not think it wants us to. Wilderness is but a stop to the end destination. Surely, the voyage did not stop at the shipwreck. Nor the great exodus at the roaring sea. 

Guilt will tell us it is the same as grief. It is certainly similar, both in characteristics and tendencies. Both fixate on what was lost and both claim to be born out of love. But they are different. With guilt, we are obligated and prevented. Duty-bound. It impedes and true healing never comes. Halted with a blockade of shoulds and have-tos. But is it possible that guilt is born out of the abuse of grief? An overdose on a medicine meant to heal?

Guilt often obligates. It instills in us a false sense of duty to maintain. It is usually against the heart. Where we expected the freedom to choose, we are presented with a decision already made. Where we expected a lightening of burdens, we see a piling on. A false responsibility. Though it masquerades as something good, the intentions rarely are. We are backed into a corner and we are forced to do something against our will. Subtlety and passiveness are its game. Festering stagnation, its goal. 

The argument usually tells us that there is work to be done. That it is our noble responsibility to stay and see it through to the end, though we know there will be no end in sight. There never is with guilt. 

But surely, seeing something to the end is indeed noble and good, isn’t it? I can imagine that in some circumstances, guilt is an excellent tool of discipline. A worker who begrudgingly does what was asked of him is still one who did what was asked. Maybe ‘guilt’ has a much truer form under its distorted mask. As with all things in this world, something much purer than what it is now. But what if it is not our work? What if it is not ours to take on, not anymore? 

We are told to stay because staying will preserve what we have left. Our last and only chance. The choice to keep it alive on our side of eternity. Where we are. 

Isn’t this a frustrating thing to be told? The choice to keep something we cherish ‘alive’ rather than let it pass on is not much of a choice. We cannot move on or we will be guilty of not caring enough. Keep the fragments and hold them dear. Never let go for once we do, its fragility will crumble through our very fingertips and disappear forever.

But grief tells us something different. Grief tells us that this world is broken. That it is far from whole. And it tells us it is not the rightful place for things not of this world. What is lost has passed, but what is lost is not gone. 

It tells us that we can love and still go where they are. We can still find the truer thing.

It is a hard thing to be told we can keep what we love alive. It is an even harder thing to be told to let it go. And that it is okay to move on.

God is fond of the harder things. He calls us to His mountain, His cross. And as I submit myself to the process, I can never again deny the worth. A purity that cannot come any other way. 

It should be no surprise that reaching the mountain top requires much. Did we not expect the ascent to be arduous and difficult? Did we not take into account the strength needed for the climb? 

Did we seriously think it was such a small thing to be with God?

My body aches and my eyes are tired, but maybe grief bore our tears to keep us from apathy and slumber. To give us daring to look forward, beyond the now. To hold our bodies up so we could keep moving out of the tomb. Maybe it was our strength in the night. The thing that held us together until the day finally came. 

And maybe, it was the iron in our blood and the fight in our hearts. Prayer in our Gethsemane. 

We have waited and waned. Though we will walk into the warm light weary, we will reach it if we choose to.

I chose the harder thing and it has come with it a reckoning. A judgment of guilt. Yet, here I stand, having chosen the harder thing. And here I stand with that judgment poured and spent on someone that stood beside me on my journey. In the beginning and at the end and everything in between, an exorcism of guilt.

So, what is left? If there is no longer any guilt to stay behind or hold us in our graves, then the horizon is the only place left to go. I am sure that hint of sunlight is the same one He saw when the stone began to roll. 

Grief, it seems, was never supposed to be sustainable. Doubtful that the intention was to ever be so. Possibly just a balm for the aches and pains of this broken place. Possibly something more. A practice of resurrection perhaps. To keep us going in the long race ahead; for that climb up the mountain. 

Surely, that is where He is waiting. And surely, that is where she will also be.