Beautiful Ashes
Living with cancer is like living in the desert. It’s hot as fire. Your body and spirit are scorched by the heat. Walking in barren places, hoping you reach the other side.
The desert holds its own strange, prickly beauty at sunset and sunrise. Just like there are moments of profound beauty you wouldn’t have experienced without the backdrop of cancer.
It’s not considered kosher to speak of our grief and despair. People tend to marginalize those who don’t stay in happy, positive places. We are “strong” when we stay positive and happy; “weak” if we are sad, broken, or in despair.
Yet God didn’t respond that way to the words of His children. In fact, He recorded them as divine legacy for the rest of us to read.
Sadness and despair and lament do not need to be “normalized.” They already are normal. We need to enlarge our minds to hold space for the full gamut of emotions God created in the human experience. There aren’t “good” and “bad” emotions. We find some of them pleasant and unpleasant. We have some choice in how long we stay in certain emotions. But we cannot choose not to experience certain emotions ever. To refuse to acknowledge them is dishonoring the God who created them.
The same people who don’t want to hear your loneliness and despair may want to read Psalm 102.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, let my cry come to you! Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call! Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my flesh. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places; I lie awake; I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop ….
He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.
Let the be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord and in Jerusalem his praise, when people gather together and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.
Tonight a small band from church held a concert in Liam’s honor. They invited the boys to open. Adam and Liam played three of their own songs and “This is where the healing begins.”
David & I feel so lost in grief this weekend and our boys are singing of faith in front of crowds. So often, their words and music lead my heart back to Jesus. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “A little child shall lead them.”