As warmer weather comes it is, once again, hard to fight memories. The why's are not as relentless anymore, as I cannot imagine being the person I am today without walking the road we have walked as a family. It grows in ways nothing else in life can even begin to spur growth in a human heart. It's been two years this summer and the guilt has subsided, the agonizing sorrow diminished to mere memories that the heart still finds a bit difficult to process at times. I find it a bit odd and a little surreal to live life and go through our days as routinely and normally as we do after having so deeply mourned and endured all of that which we walked. I remember the pain so intimately...can still touch it and feel it all...but it's as though it's all been numbed to varying degrees. Somewhere the sting was removed. Time is a healer. And the Lord has done amazing things within our life since the summer and fall of 2009. He used the pregnancy and birth of Graham and Gatlin to heal so many raw bleeding wounds. I understand now that pain....deep agonizing pain....does bring life....new growth...but then so much more. That which only those can understand that have personally walked the road of such deep anguish. This video clip was one of my lifelines through the months of loss in 2009. As I watched it again after hearing of David Wilkerson's death last week I was once again reminded on such a deep level of what was endured that year. Just as music, places, smells can bring with them such vivid memories, watching this brought with it so many emotions that were felt while Brad and I struggled to get through each day and every breath was fought for. We questioned all of life and even deeply doubted the existence of God some of those days....many of those days. Two people born and raised in families firmly grounded in church. It wasn't until we walked this road that we truly came to an intimate understanding of who God is within our own lives. What we considered a "deep relationship" with the Lord was tried and tested in every way and found to be merely a taste of the depths and ways we would begin to know Him and how He would bring us into Him.
How unfathomable His love is for us. How deep the pain but how great His love. His mercy endures forever. Anguish. The call to live fully in Him and know Him intimately. The cry to embrace the pain and leave apathy, complacency and mediocrity behind. Anguish. I have felt it. I know it deeply. And because of it I will never be the same. Oh the ache of ever being found guilty of apathy, complacency, mediocrity. Anguish. Deep pain. Let me never forget where we have been. True joy is born from anguish. Only He can bring the contentment and joy that have overcome the depths of sorrow. Only He can fulfill and heal to the depths that I know it. All true passion comes out of anguish. There is no awakening until we have been truly broken.
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2 comments:
Prayers for your family & as always the free spirited one is on my heart & in my prayers.
Nik, reading this brought memories of the agony when we talked through so much of this over the phone not being here at the time. There's not much else like hurting for you and Scott with such a helpless feeling of no quick fix. What I've learned through experiences I've endured, like everyone else, unique to me is the very truth you've expressed here.....gutt level anguish produces growth in every area of life. I've also learned from my life and watching the way you handle life that this anguish can either make you or break you. It has not broken me and will not break me, like you. That is a choice because I refuse, like you, to be a victim. You and Brad have endured more than your fair share of "life experiences", but your marriage and you individually are the absolute epidimy of strength and courage as a result of endurance that rises out of real faith...the essence of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. I've told you a thousand times that my ultimate prayer for each of you when you were younger was that you would know God for who He truly is.....not because of who someone else told you that He is. God's grace is still sufficient in time of need. I'm sure not telling you anything you don't already know in a big way, but even the knowing doesn't lessen my longing for you to be past this stage. I love you so much and am so proud of you for who you are. Your stand for honesty and bottom line reality is staggering to me, especially at the seeminly expense of your "reputation". Love, Mother
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