I saw the couple standing across from me and my heart broke all over again. I pried my gaze away but the next place I looked was another couple, arm in arm. And then another. Everywhere, couples standing together, being there for each other. It made me want to scream.
So I turned my eyes to the flowers on the casket and tuned in to the preacher's words. This time it was my uncle who'd gone to Heaven, his departure only four weeks after our last big loss. The one that shattered our home and ripped me in half.
The preacher droned on. "Until He comes again, death is our only exit from this life...." I didn't want to listen to the words I so desperately needed to hear. Being at a funeral again this soon was killing me and I just wanted to get out of there. So I looked away from all those infuriating the couples, away from the casket, and toward the fresh mound of dirt only a few footsteps away. The urge to scream vanished as waves of grief overcame me. How can the broken pieces of a soul keep on shattering? But sometimes they can.
All these women have their husbands by their side and mine is under that pile of dirt. As the preacher wrapped things up, the mound beckoned me. When I reached it I fell to my knees and rested my hands on the dirt, the anger rising up again.
How could you do this to me? You should be here with the kids and me, not down there. We need you. But the closest I could get to him was a handful of dirt.
So I cursed my circumstances and squeezed that dry, dusty dirt in my furious fist and watched it fall through my fingers to the ground. Again I fought the urge to scream because how rotten is it to hold a handful of worthless dirt instead of the thing you really want?
But oh how much like that dirt are the things we treasure in this life. The more tightly we clench them, the more easily they slip away. So I knelt there longing to touch the one who'd left me, despising my fistful of stupid sorry dirt, knowing my yearnings were futile because none of it would bring him back.
How much more easily I could've borne it all if only I'd known the seeds God would sow in that ugly-brown mound of dirt. If only I'd realized the amazing things He can do through heart-wrenching circumstances like mine. If only I'd understood that losing this love would drive me to my one True Love and into the deepest love relationship of my life.
When my babies were little my Granny used to ease my germ-conscious mind by telling me that kids need a certain amount of dirt to be healthy. She was probably right, but now I'd take it a little farther than that. Today I'd say that sometimes the dirt is what makes life worth living.
Even still, God is using that wretched mound of dirt to sow into me the seeds of love and mercy and healing, and to root me firmly in Him. To feed me, grow me, prune me, and transform me into someone who's finally starting to get it, someone who is living the abundance of life in Christ. The growing pains have been more agonizing than I can articulate, yet more life-giving than I ever dreamed.
I'll never stop thanking God for all He's done in me and for the new life He's given me. And to think it all begin with a wretched pile of dirt....
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Comments (4)
Sometimes, hidden blessings are there, even though they remain hidden. Ain`t life just wonderful. I do hope that you are really happy, and not just putting on a brave face. I do realize what a loss the other is, but still wish you and yours only the best. Peace, if you can....
My sister, Your anger is very understandable. And I can see, by what you are writing that the Lord is busy in your life. Anger is a very powerful emotion and it has the potential to do the most damage. My dad was in the military and he told me that anger is used best when it is aimed in the right direction.
Yours is aimed in the right direct.
You are angry about the situations in your life. But since you can not change those situations the best thing to do with that anger is to release it to God. Send the kids to the sitter's house for a few hours and when the place is all quiet- beat the delights out of your bed pillow, cry and yell out to God everything you are feeling - hold nothing back. God has really broad shoulders- trust me, He can take it!
Then when the emotions are spent out. If you do not hear His voice right away. Pick up your Bible and read John 15:9 and know deep inside that the words are true. Read Psalm 77 and know that He understands how you feel- that is why He put that section in His word.
I know these verses because I've had dirt in my hands more then once.
And, please know that you are being prayed for, for much healing and peace!
Sorry to hear this:[
I had gone through a decade of grief after my dad's lost. i wandered so far away from God...I should have been a doctor helping poor villages if he's with me, i can't cry over my mom 'coz she's in grief too. But God reached out to reveal His love to me. Little by little the healing began.He led me to villages where I could be a medical missionary to glorify Him in displaced people even though I'm not a doctor. All things work together for good to Him that love Him. ...Not height nor depth nor any creature can separate us from the love of GOd...Romans 8:28-39. I'm homesick for heaven... my only hope. God bless.