Welcoming Grief and Sadness

I used to think Christians had all the answers, all the luck, great health, beautiful children, perpetual happiness.  I mean, regardless of what life handed them, there they were, ready to jump into a lion's den or hang upside down on a cross or shake hands with a leper.  Christians never got sad, did they? At least not for a long period of time, because they had eternity to be happy...and they had so many friends, and of course, they have God on their side, right? All that singing and clapping and hallelujah stuff....Christians are a bunch of happy campers. And they NEVER EVER stay sad for long. Right? So, as a Christian, if I am sad, I must be doing something wrong, right?

Wrong.  

Sadness and grief. These are powerful emotions, and normal reactions to human loss. God understands that--He created us, and our jumbled bag of emotions. Jesus, fully human, yet fully God, wept when Lazarus died. I know this, my head knows this, my soul knows this, yet I was struggling with welcoming my grief. But I am getting better at it. Because hiding my grief with false smiles, with busy-ness, with depression, behind facades of "I'm fine, how are you?s" was just too damn exhausting.  

Despite previous posts, I am overwhelmed with sadness, practically every day lately. While no one has died, I have lost most of my birth family--my mother, my sisters, my sisters 'families--even though they are still living.  I have no recourse to right the wrongs, no way to confront them, no court in which I may recover what I have lost. The damage--irreparable. The grief--immeasurable, and at times, nearly unbearable. Writing helps, reading helps, keeping busy helps, and yes, praying definitely helps lessen the sadness, but in truth, I do not want to escape the sadness.  I embrace it. I welcome it. I ache for it. Because in this deep, dark pool of sadness, my faith is tested, my soul is stripped completely bare. The proverbial rug has been ripped out from under my feet, and my world as i knew it has been flipped completely upside down. Yes, I have some constants of my life; I am not Job, after all. I have my husband, my home, my children and precious grandchildren, my dad and stepmother, my in-laws.  I am loved, I have friends, I have my health. But as anyone who suffers loss, whether through death, or divorce, or separation, will tell you, sadness is not about what you have that matters--it is what you have lost.

In the depth of that heart-wrenching loss, with everything topsy-turvy, my world upside down, nothing making any sense; when at a moment's notice I may just burst into tears while drinking a cup of coffee at the local bakery, or run out and sit in my car and sob uncontrollably for two hours in the freezing cold; when I feel like sleeping and never getting up, when I get irrationally angry at my husband...I welcome the grief, the sadness, the accompanying confusion, because it truly does make me see the tenets of my faith clearer. For now I MUST lean on everything I have believed up until now, the advice and counsel I have so freely given to others in their times of need.  When the bottom has fallen out of the boat, and you don't know how to swim anymore, the only option is to fall back on that life preserver that has been floating out there all along.  

I grab it. I hang on to it.  

Today it is the only thing keeping me afloat.