Love grows perhaps the greater.

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. 

(JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

It was just over a week ago when I got the text from my sister. It said that my cousin had been hit by a car and was in the hospital. Please pray, it said.

My parents came and picked me up twenty minutes later, and we all drove out to the hospital.

Two days later, my cousin died.

-

I can't find words to make sense of this grief. It still feels unreal, unreal enough that the days do not feel burdened by a dark heaviness, like when my grandfather died, but instead feel grey with sharp flashes of grief. I go about doing the every day tasks and am surprised to find myself sobbing or crying at a memory. I keep on reliving a sense of complete helplessness when I see those I love grieving even deeper than I am — my sister, my mother, my aunt. It hurts.

And yet, love mingles with grief. We felt it together in that hospital waiting room when we first heard the news of my cousin's condition. We felt it when we finally left the hospital after she had died. We left in a huge crowd, crying and holding on to each other. I feel it through the prayers, texts, and many facebook messages I have from those I love, even those I do not know very well. The constant reminder that I am not alone is enough to bring some light and hope to these days.

Love mingled with grief.

This will not be an easy season, and I know the grief is far from gone. But tomorrow, we will be together for Thanksgiving, and it will be a beautiful, hard time.

And who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Please, grant us peace.

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Snapshot

We stared with wonder.

"A thunder storm in July? It can't be."

The thunder flashed and the lightening roared. The grey clouds traveled towards us. The sound of thunder mingled with our conversation. We laughed and talked about everything under the sun - my friend, my Mom, and I. We lost track of time.

Towards the end of the dinner, we gathered the white plates and plastic water jug and looked up at the sky. A double-rainbow stood out, clear and bright against the darkest clouds. I told Mom about my favorite passage from Morning and Evening.

"Jesus Christ is... the covenant Rainbow, displaying all the glorious hues of the divine character and betokening peace. To the believer, when his trials and temptations surround him, it is sweet to behold the person of our Lord Jesus Christ—to see him bleeding, living, rising, and pleading for us. God’s rainbow is hung over the cloud of our sins, our sorrows, and our woes, to prophesy deliverance."

Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, August 12

I talked with Mom. The rainbows not only prophesy deliverance, they prove that we are delivered. We will face grey clouds and thunderstorms. We face them now. But not alone, never alone. We have a God who loves us enough to send colored streaks of light after a storm, and even more so, He sent His son to bear the storm.

Mom smiled. We went inside.

And the storm passed over us.

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A Story

You felt it as soon as you walked into the house. Beauty so great that it was tangible. It wasn't just beauty: it was hope, grace, God-bringing-joy-out-of-suffering. The sun made us squint our eyes as we sat and waited for the ceremony to begin. That's the end to this story, but the beginning looks much different...

Two years ago, our pastor's wife died. It was unexpected, sharp, painful. I remember playing the piano at her funeral - people filled the church, and you could hear the rain pounding outside. We grieved her loss and his pain. There are no words for that grief, no answers for the question why. Pastor John clung to his faith in God's sovereignty, that day and in long months then years afterward. And although God's grace was evident, His purpose was not.

Six months ago, someone new came to our church. We're a small church, and newcomers are always noticed (and welcomed rather enthusiastically). Her name was Myrna. She came to lunch at our house, and we heard her story. She was a widow, and her husband had died four years ago. She spoke of God's love and sovereignty, how He gave her strength and hope. You could see her trust and faith, even during that short time. Someone else came to our house. And that was the day that Myrna met Pastor John.

Three days ago, they said "I do" and smiled and kissed under the bright June sun.

It was beautiful, so beautiful. My words fall flat, but it's the story that counts. I love and need stories like this. Even though my life is so different and my pain so much less than theirs, their story gives me hope. You could list Suffering as a main character in this story, and that would hold to the truth. But alongside it stands Hope and a God, a very real, incomprehensible, and marvelous God.

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On Living

"I know sometimes it seems difficult..." I began.

"Difficult!" All she seemed able to do was echo my words, spitting them out as if they tasted bitter.

"Yes, I know, but we are alive," I argued, "Think how alive we are. It isn't like Southstone where we just went on and on and nothing ever happened. Here I can feel us living. Don't you feel as if you were being stretched?"

"It hurts to be stretched."

Greengage Summer, Rumer Godden

Living right now is just like that quote. The type of Living that stretches and stretches, pulls and pulls. There's just so much. I can't put my thoughts in order, so I'm leaning on quotes.

"We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us." (Clown in the Belfry, Frederick Buechner)

"The characteristics of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality." (The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis)

If pain makes life real, it also makes hope unmistakably real. Hope becomes something to hold, something to wield. Also, something to lose. But it's there, undeniably there.

Sometimes, I have to pull myself out of my narrow world and just laugh. It's not a cynical laugh or a despairing laugh, but a laugh of pure joy. A laugh that realizes how small I am and how great God truly is.

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

(God's Grandeur, Gerald Manley Hopkins)

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Hope, Revisited

"This dragon of despair burns down all that I hold dear. I begin to sink deeper and deeper into depression and apathy. Why bother? It's a serious question. Why get up? Why make the bed? Why fight for anything at all? Because there is still hope yet! Because the dragon just might have a weakness. Because your heroes are uninformed enough to think they might have a chance. The fat lady hasn't sung. The concrete has not set yet. There is still time. Yes, this planet is wrought with horrors and pain and heartache, but there is beauty still. The dark horses are still running."

Jon Foreman, The Dark Horse

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Hope

"Hope is not a lottery ticket that you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door."

- Rebecca Solnit

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Of Basil and Hope

Grandfather stood by Captain Rodney's open grave and spoke, "'You are dust, and to dust you shall return.' All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."


And there was no mistaking the joy in his voice as he sang those last three words.

A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L'Engle

I put the book down, after underlining the passage in pencil. Stacks of basil stalks lay all around me. I was attempting to be industrious and harvest all my basil, pulling leaf after leaf from the stalks. But I had made the mistake of bringing my book outside, and half-way through the work, I entered into a world of bright words.

Plans were in the making for a hopeful move up to ID, and I was so excited. But in the back of my mind, I feared and doubted. My illness likes to catch me at unawares, *and* at the most inconvenient times. And no amount of excitement could calm the fear I had that I might have to stay behind, yet again. That's partially why I chose one of L'Engle's books to read, she always makes me laugh, gives me the ability to laugh at my own fears and embrace light.

Anyway. I came to that passage and couldn't help but be comforted. What kind of hope is this? That we can look at the face of death and sing Alleluia Alleluia?

This glorious hope is as tangible as the basil I held in my hands. I crushed a leaf between my fingers, the fresh smell of basil now surrounding me, like the doubts and fears I had earlier. But now I felt surrounded - and surprised - by hope.

I don't think it's so much knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the acknowledgment that we have light in the tunnel. And come fear, illness, doubts... we have this hope. The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?

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Joy Comes in the Morning

"For staff we have His promise, whose 'word is tried, whose way perfect:' for present hope His providence, 'who gives the shield of salvation, whose gentleness makes great;' for final home His bosom, who 'dwells in the height of Heaven;' for crowning prize a glory, exceeding and eternal.

Let us finish our course, and keep the fait, reliant in the issue to come off more than conquerors; ' Art thou not from everlasting mine, Holy One? We shall not die!'"

- From Villette, by Charlotte Brontë

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