Good Grief!

Not too long ago we lost our precious cat, Maisie. She was young; it was sudden and unexpected. One morning last week as I was heading to work, I was contemplating the meaning of the word grief. What is it? What does it mean to grieve? Even over just the last few years, I've grieved many times over, too many that I've just lost count. 

Grief doesn't just come after some sort of loss, but it comes in the midst of a big change - both good and bad. It results in big feelings, and this is the first time that I've been able to openly grieve in front of my sons - but this time we are all grieving over the same thing, each of us in different ways. It has been a valuable teaching moment to say the least. We've seen denial, anger, bargaining, depression, tears, irritability ... we've been walking through it all choosing to keep our hearts open and soft in the middle of the pain.

Most people think of grief as a deep penetrating agony pain after loss, particularly death. It is that, but it isn't. It's more. Grief is what we feel when we are separated from something or someone that we love and care for. A change in jobs, relocation, breaking up with a long-term relationship or friendship, divorce, house fires, floods ... even a new marriage can result in grieving the ideas you thought you would experience or that the single life is gone. Grief is a core human experience. 

Grief is the pain of separation. 

So just as He has spoken to me over the years, that morning when asking my Heavenly Papa my questions, just trying to make sense of things, He said something that broke me. 

Ruth, don't you see how great is my grief over how humanity choses to be separate from Me? 
My longing desire is to be able to walk together, side-by-side again.
I want to be known intimately, not just as a father, but as a friend. 
This is why I sent Jesus. He died. He defeated death, and when that the veil* was torn in two from top to bottom, my Spirit could dwell again among humanity without barrier. 
I don't want there to be separation between you and I, or anyone else.
I want to walk in relationship, in an intimacy that isn't bound by human flesh.
I want our hearts in sync.
I grieve over our time apart. 

Phew. That was heavy. 

This is an invitation to move past the experience of grief. This is an invitation to what Paul describes in his letter to the church in Rome: pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words. Go read Romans 8. All of it. Sit with it. Read it again. Read it in several translations.  

... but now with eager expectation, all creation longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God's children. To this day we are aware of the universal agony and groaning of creation, as if it were in the contractions of labor for childbirth. And it's not just creation. We who have already experienced the first fruits of the Spirit also inwardly groan as we passionately long to experience our full status as God's sons and daughters - including our physical bodies being transformed. For this is the hope of our salvation.      ~ Romans 8:20-24 ~

All of creation groans. All of creation longs. Humanity can't express the grief, but we sure do see the ache of the emptiness in our own denial, anger, bargaining, depression, anxiety and fear. Humanity is imprisoned and held in the hostage to a longing, a search for hope. We look everywhere, everywhere, and then we find it in the arms of Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. In Him we live, and move, and we have our being. Apart from God we can do nothing. Without Him our hearts become hardened, surrounded by walls leaving us in a continual state of grief and self-imposed exile. 

But with God? With God, we can move beyond grief, find hope and healing through that personal relationship we were made for. No guilt, no shame, no religion, but a transformation borne out of knowing Him. He offers a peace unfathomable, a joy untethered, and a life that is full beyond measure. 

Without God's grief, we would have no hope. Without His longing there would be no redeemer. 

As it can so simply be stated: the world needs Jesus. He is our hope. He is our redeemer. He is the key to being reunited in love and peace with the God who knew us before we were even formed in the womb. We are spiritual beings in physical bodies. While we may still be physically separated from God, our hearts don't have to be. 

Stirred and in eager expectation,

Ruth

*The veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was a single piece of fabric that measured about 4 inches by 20 feet by 60 feet.