I woke up this morning from such a vivid dream of being in our home in Uganda. A familiar ache settled in and nearly took my breath away. I miss our home. I miss our friends. I miss our community. Faces filled my mind, people I thought would always be a part of our lives, people I thought our little boys would grow up with, just like their sisters did.
As my eyes began filling with tears, I tried to push the thoughts away. “No! I am all done feeling sad about this!” my mind screamed. I spent most of the last year feeling sad about our transition to the US and missing my home and people there. But recently, I have felt like we have turned a corner – finally settling into a good family rhythm, finally feeling a little more at home on our Tennessee farm, finally finding joy in little, every-day tasks and moments. Joy and laughter have once again appeared in our home that seemed clouded in grief last year, and I am grateful.
And I think somewhere deep in my heart, I have been conditioned to believe that I cannot feel joy and sadness at the same time. It has to be one or the other. I cannot grieve and be grateful simultaneously. I think of joy and sorrow as opposites and therefore believe that they are things that cannot co-exist. So as soon as grief over what I thought life might look like, what I dreamed it would be, starts to show up, as soon as I feel the lump in my throat rising, I want to push it away and just get on back to being happy. That feels more comfortable to me and I like comfortable.
Grief threatens to swallows up joy and that scares me. I don’t want to go back to the season of sadness we found ourselves in last year. But what if rather than be afraid of grief and sadness, we learned to take it to God? What if instead of trying to push it away, we learned to say it out loud and ask God to hold us steady while we felt it? Maybe as we handed these big feelings to God, He would show us His character in new ways.
My feelings, your feelings, they aren’t in charge here. And while sometimes deep feelings can lead us to the Father, often they are just deceptive. Our feelings don’t dictate who God is, or who we are. They don’t dictate whether or not He is near to us, whether or not He desires to speak to us, whether or not we are loved by Him.
So today, I decided to do something different with my emotions. I have been learning and thinking a lot this year about the Psalms and how joy and sorrow, praise and deep lament, grief and rejoicing are incorporated into almost every one. The Psalmist doesn’t pick just one emotion, but instead brings everything he feels to the Father and asks God to remind him of who God is. In so many of the Psalms, lament over a loss, a personal trial, or a global injustice are right up next to praise and thanksgiving for who God is and all that He has done.
So this morning, I decided to sit with this grief that I haven’t felt in a while. And I decided to ask God to hold me in it, and to hold it with me. Just like my three-year-old asks to be held when He is sad or hurt or in need or just wants a “snuggle-momma,” I curled up in the corner of the couch and asked my kind Father-God to hold me while I felt all of my emotions instead of stuffing them away. And I asked Him to remind me of who He is. I felt the Spirit remind me that I am not too much for Him, my emotions are not too big for Him, and that there is room for both grief and thanksgiving.
I opened to Psalm 13, and let it wash over me.
“How long, Oh, Lord?” David cries out a prayer for peace.
And I feel it, I am sure you do too – will I always feel this way? Will I always feel this sad when I remember the life we adored for so long?
“How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?”
I echo David’s questions and maybe you do too. Maybe there is a loss or a grief that, even if it is getting a little better with time, still blindsides you.
But as David sits with God in His grief, as I allow God to hold me in mine, our hearts turn to trust –
“But I trust in your unfailing love,” he continues.
When we scoot up next to our Father, when we curl up in His lap with our sadness and our grief, He reminds us of who He is – Trustworthy.
“My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me.” He has been good, in the joy and in the hard, in the good and in the sad, and in the prayers for peace. My heart can rest even in the midst of deep emotion.
I breathe in trust, I exhale peace.
I am held.