Good Grief

My Dear Community, 

Thank you for your love and prayers. Thank you for the encouragement and support. Thank you for standing with me during this time of grief. 

Two months ago from today, I held the hand of my first love and kissed his lips as he breathed his last breath. Jordan walked bravely into the arms of the One whom he lived to serve and love. If I could describe the final moment of his life, I could only paint in such a way: I watched his spirit slip out of the beaten, earth-ridden body and walk into an everlasting life. I felt his life leave his body as I kissed him one last time. He fought with everything and loved everyone intentionally through the most morbid experience of death I have ever witnessed. 

God, my heart is heavy. My heart is torn. I’ve been hit. But You are the Lifter of Heads.

I had almost 9 months with my bridegroom. Every moment was so rich in love and life that it seemed like we truly were married ’75 plus years.’ God let me be with His precious lamb for almost 9 months, and although it didn’t seem long enough to me, I still got the depth of a pure and fearless love that one would get in 75 years of marriage. I got my dream, but in a different way than I had hoped. 

If there’s one thing that I have realized in this journey, it is this: we were not made for death. The original plan was not to experience death. He never intended it to be this way. I often think of what went through His mind as He walked through His perfect garden alongside the first man He ever breathed life into. So in love with His creation, but still fully aware of the ominous future looming ahead. He knew we wouldn’t choose Him- we would choose death. Death so dark and disturbing, we didn’t even know what we were signing up for. But He knew. Yet, He still made a way for us to have life with Him in the end. Because He loves us that much, and He just does stuff like that- redeems broken, twisted, and ugly things. I understand a piece of the relentless love with which He stalks us, always at our heels, breathing at the back of our necks. We can’t escape His love because He already knows what we are going to do anyways. We can run all we want, but we will only run back into His infectious love.

Jesus revealed a piece of His love to me through Jordan. I believe He gave me Jordan to show me parts of Him that I was never exposed to or able to grasp. What a gift. And again I realize, He’s into redeeming broken things.

The hope I have through this time of grief is that in the life Jordan now lives with Jesus. I’ve begged for Jordan to come back so many times. But if Jordan were to come back now, I would stagger to believe heaven was then real and that great of an experience. No, Jordan is full and whole, with the Great Hope, the One whom we are living for in the first place. 

So to you, my dear family in Christ, I want to share with you what I shared in both celebration ceremonies of Jordan’s life. When I look at the community surrounding me during this time of heartache, those of you I have met and have yet to meet, I see soldiers covered in battle wounds. Our armor is battered and torn; we have blood on our bodies, dirt from fighting in the depths of a war.

But we won. We won my friends, because we fought in faith and we all watched Jordan walk into eternal life, completely healed. I look at what seems broken in my life and I see that it is to the desperate attention to a Savior who will redeem. What broken parts are in your life that make absolutely no sense? Redemption is on its way, in some surprising shape or form. Though sometimes, we have to force ourselves to look for it. The great thing about Jesus is that He doesn’t defend Himself, He defends us. He lets us look for that piece of redemption during our grief when we can breathe enough and are ready to see it.

Thank you for standing with me now. Thank you for fighting that long and rugged battle with us. 

Good grief. Have we been through a journey or what.