The Anatomy of a Loss.

Last night I could not stop thinking about the man from New Orleans on the news who had had to let go of his wife when his house split in two. The reporter was crying. I was crying. His pain was raw and heartbreaking to see.

During my prayers I kept seeing the people on their homes waiting for rescue. I thought of two fellow bloggers who have recently experienced a terrible loss in their life. One is very angry at God. I understand that. Some think that if we just believe in God, if we just live good enough lives, then we will be protected somehow, but that isn't what Christ promised us. That isn't the way life is.

Christ discussed sorrow, he knew that we would all experience it. He himself experienced it. Make no mistake about it. God weeps with us.

We cannot escape life's blows. God gave us free will and a world with the law of physics. We can't escape the reality of life and nature. Does God sometimes intervene with miracles? Certainly. I have seen that for myself. But I think those times are rare and are driven by a deep faith or a purpose known only to heaven.

When I was 22 I lost my Daddy to a heart attack. If you are new to my blog, my post on him is here. He was the finest man I ever knew. My heart was completely broken. He was the rock of our family. I didn't see how we could go on without him. I wasn't angry at God. Even that young my faith was deep and I knew that this life is but a small part of eternity. I had learned from reading "The Hiding Place," the story of a Christian woman taken to the concentration camps during the Holocaust for hiding Jews, that one should pray to God with a grateful heart no matter what your circumstances. Why? Because no matter what life throws at us, good can come from it....if we let it. If we pray and give God our pain and our tears.

That was a very difficult thing to do. I watched one brother of mine give in to the pain of losing Daddy. It took him years of heartache to finally give it to God. But that day, the day that I lost the most important thing in my life, I got down on my knees and thanked God for the years that I had had with my father. I thanked him for all that my Daddy had been to me. I thanked him for the wonderful childhood I had had. I thanked him for the values and love my father had given me. In that moment I felt great peace. I felt the comfort of a love that is unending. It was like an invisible warm blanket covered me. It was.....Indescribable.

I thought the world would fall apart. I thought my mom would not be able to go on. I thought my brothers would never be happy again. But in that moment of peace, I knew that it would be alright. I knew.

And it was. My mother happily remarried a wonderful man a few years later. My brothers went on to become the men my father wanted them to be. As I said, it took one of my brothers some self inflicted heartache to get there, but he did get there.

When we are overwhelmed with grief, it is so difficult to pray. We are consumed with our loss and we don't want to let anyone in, even God. But this is when we must pray the most. It is in prayer that we find the comfort we need and the way out of our pain and back into the land of the living.

After the death of my father, I experienced so many gifts from God that helped me and my family get through that terrible time. So many things that have no other explanation. God doesn't promise us a safe life, just one where He will always lead us where we need to be if we let Him.

I had a friend whose child had died. Her grief was beyond what she could endure. She couldn't function. Drowning in her grief she forced herself on her knees. She wept before God, not in anger, but in sorrow. Without words she cried out to God to help her. She told me when she opened her eyes she saw herself at the foot of the cross. She saw Christ on the cross and all the suffering He was enduring. She said she understood then that He suffered with us. And the comfort came. She was given the strength to continue on and she had three more beautiful children. Her life is full of love and laughter now and she knows in her heart that she will see her first child again. Love overcame the sorrow. As I have said many times, it is love that saves us.

1 Corinthians 13:7- "The Man of Suffering is the revelation of that Love which "endures all things."

It is in this time of suffering that we must endure. We must love. We must pray.