When People You Love Fall Apart

Winter 2018 has been super heartbreaking in a lot of ways.

Someone I love is addicted to drugs, and watching them lose everything and waste away has been tragic in ways so deep I’m not sure there are words to describe how I feel…anguish??

Someone I love has cancer.

Someone I love is grieving the death of her only two grandchildren.

Someone I love is dealing with an incredibly stressful domestic abuse case.

And God is there in it all.

And God is there beside us through it all.

•••

A few months ago I came home from a long, rough, emotional day. I hugged my husband and then I said something I’ve never said before, “Let’s watch funny YouTube videos!”

Ummm…what??

Two hours before I’d been holding a dear hand and crying with a broken soul.

Laugh?

Yes. Laugh.

And for the next hour we sat and laughed until our cheeks hurt. And you know what? It was just the best.

Because I know who holds the future. And I know that grief isn’t just a steady incline to the mountain peaks…it’s also the rest along the way…the view of the valley. The small victories.

Yes, sometimes grief is the grey cliffs and the rocky terrain. Sometimes you get lost entirely.

But sometimes, after a little while of the darkness, you find that grief offers us glimpses of joy and peace and rest. That’s called mercy: compassionate care for those in distress.

Grief is an ebb and flow.

•••

God is there beside us through it all: the despair and the joy.

Someone I love is being relentlessly pursued by God.

Someone I love is being surrounded by the people of God who stood up to Love Well even when it’s hard and it hurts and you risk your own heart to do it because you might actually lose them and it never occurred to you before.

Someone I love is becoming a Grandparent all over again and God is there in all the sorrow and the mix of the wrestling with joy and grief, but mostly grief.

Someone I love has been given a new, safe home.

God is in the highs and lows. He is in the weight of loss and in the joy of newness. He doesn’t leave. He’s not afraid of brokenness.

And he is certainly not afraid of your brokenness…