2020, Grief & Perspective.
When I lost my baby at 20 weeks (over 5 years ago) I was confronted with what I believe about God, maybe for the first time. My faith had been challenged at different moments in my life, but up until this point, what I believed about loss was theoretical as my beliefs surrounding loss hadn’t been tested. As a missionary living off of financial donations from other people I learned to trust God for our finances, being someone who traveled a lot I learned to trust him for my safety, being young and put into stressful leadership positions I learned to trust him in my inadequacies. But the reality was I really hadn’t been confronted with illness or death. And because we live in a society where we don’t talk well about hard things, I hadn’t been personally exposed to grief or loss.
So when I lost my baby, Ilya, I was suddenly confronted with the reality that even when you follow God hard, sad, debilitating things happen and the reasons are unknown. In the days immediately following the loss I had to ask myself if I really believed God to be a God who can take the hard things and bring beauty from them. I had to decide if I really believed Heaven is better than Earth and if I trusted God with my life and the lives, and deaths, of those I love. Did I still believe, in the midst of suffering, he knew best and was still for my good? Spoiler alert; during this time I did choose to trust God, put my faith in him as the anchor of my soul and because of that, I believe, I have seen him bring beauty out of my pain as I have shared my story and what it has taught me about grief, pain, loss, trauma, empathy, and compassion. Was it easy? No. Does believing these things about God mean I don’t still grieve my losses or experience sadness? No, quite the opposite. So many important things have been developed in me; refining me into a sweeter person, better leader, more compassionate friend because of the grief and loss I have, and do, experience.
When I look back at myself before this defining moment in my life, I knew hard things would happen to me eventually, but I really wanted to avoid them. We hear someone has cancer and we hold our breath praying it isn’t us. We see someone has lost a child and we thank God ours are still all breathing. I wonder if you are like me where we see pain and suffering as something to be avoided at all costs because we don’t perceive these things as the good things life is made up of. If there is a 3 step plan to not suffer, we want in on that.
This year (2020) has been one of unavoidable suffering for many, if not all, of us in some way. There have been varying degrees of struggle and hardship but I think it is safe to say we are all walking a little heavier these days with the combination of natural disasters, wild fires, a global pandemic, murders, riots, protests, personal loss of human life and racial tension. All of this on top of our routines, structures, and ability to gather socially being taken away; the past 8 months truly have been wrought with grief.
We are in the midst of collective and individual struggle. If you are a person of faith, a follower of Jesus, you are not immune and have most likely found yourself with the rug pulled out from under you like everyone else. The loss of the structure of church community, job security, kids activities means the pain we tend to gingerly try to avoid has come to our front door and there is nowhere to go to run away from it, and if you try to go anywhere be sure you grab your mask, am I right?
We have had to face hard things in our midst this year and hard things change us, for good or for bad. For Jesus Followers, how we change depends on if we really believe what we say we do.
Do we really believe God is in control?
That he is for our good?
That he is faithful even in the midst of the hard things?
Do we believe he is working when we can’t see?
Do we believe heaven is our home?
That our citizenship is there and not here?
When we choose to answer “yes” to these questions it will be evident in how we live our day to day lives. Choosing to follow Jesus by faith and yielding our will and understanding to the Holy Spirit will produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control will be evident and will also draw others to wonder how we can be these things in a world that is so uncertain, fearful and grieving. Allowing the truth of who God is to shape our reality and perspective instead of our current circumstances will speak loudly to a world that is being tossed back and forth by their feelings and the culture around them.
If we do not sit with ourselves and answer these questions honestly, or if the answers to these questions are “no” or “I am not sure” our perspective will be off and what will follow is uncertainty, panic, anxiety, reaching for control, overreacting; feeling like we are one circumstance away from breaking. The more we keep our vision on our circumstances instead of on our Savior we will be shaky. Kind of like Peter. He stepped out of the boat, believed in Jesus, but then took his eyes away and when he did he began to sink.
If 2020 has you feeling like you are sinking, like this year and all it has brought are waves threatening to wash over and take you under, I want to reach out and grab your hand and gently remind you to look up. To remember who we live for, where our hope is, who our anchor is, who is in control and that the answer to all of these things - our Three in One God - can be trusted.
There is much we can’t control happening around us right now. Instead of trying to tread water to figure it out on our own, let’s fix our eyes again on Jesus. He was, is and is to come. He has always been and will always be. Remember, this world is not our home, nothing surprises our sovereign God, and no man can stop his plan. He is the redeemer, taking the hard and impossible things and, when we allow him, brings beauty.
He is still working, even if you and I can’t see.
Your story and how you show up, who you trust, where your perspective lies this year matters. People are watching you and I, how we grieve, how we love, how we live during the struggle. Just like my story of grief in loosing Ilya touched many. Our stories in hard times touch many.
Today I pray we will all adjust our vision, because when we do we will live in the fruit of the Spirit and when that happens we will be a sweet fragrance drawing people to Jesus. And if that isn’t exactly what our world, and 2020, needs I don’t know what is.