He Uses It All

It's been eight years today since the Lord took her home. This year the sadness didn't build and crash like a tidal wave.  It is present and under the surface, but my walk with the Lord over the last eight years has grown an acceptance of her loss like moss on a stone. The acceptance helps take the edge off the sharp edges of grief. Instead of a tidal wave, this week is a strong surf week--manageable. 

Part of me doesn't appreciate this new found softness. It still feels wrong, like a betrayal, to not ache and hurt today the same as I did eight years ago. It feels like I love her less or have forgotten her more if the pain isn't as acute, but that's not true. If anything, I may love her more today than I did eight years ago.

Because the other thing I have a hard time admitting--I wouldn't be the person I am today had her death not turned my world upside down and inside out. 

I like the person I am today. Her death was the catalyst for a deeper relationship with the Lord I'm not sure I would have sought. The struggle through the darkness of the grief and the reality of depression's hold in my life have made me stronger and wiser. Carrying, feeling, and living through the pain, despite the pain, has taught me lessons about compassion and hope no other circumstances could have taught.

I HATE that eight years later her death has been the life event I attribute to molding me into a better human being. I would gladly give up all the growth I've experienced in the last eight years just to hug her neck again. 

But then, it's not about what I want. It never has been. It never will be. It's about the person God wants me to be. It's about the masterpiece my Jesus is creating with my life for His purposes, and only He knows the tools and life lessons and ways and methods needed to accomplish His end result. Only He can take the horrible and make it beautiful in time, in ways no one thought to look. Whether He caused her death or allowed her death really makes no difference. The truth is He has continued to make beauty from ashes, to work life for good for those of us who have called on His name in our hours of need.

And I'm only one witness to her life. One story. There are more. So many more.

Though our loved ones leave us, God still uses them to further His purposes through us, through our stories. We honor them with lives well-lived. We honor their lives by battling our grief instead of hiding from it. No, we live to tell the story of another day, to tell their story another day. Whether our story is one of personal defeat or victory, the power and redemption comes from having a story to tell, to share, to live. So both our deepest lows and highest highs have the same redemptive value when you own your story and share it.

Their deaths only lose meaning when the ones they leave behind stay stuck in the past and don't press forward into the future. Too many bitter, pitiful souls have gotten lost in the quagmire of unprocessed grief. When you're stuck in the muck, you lose sight of your purpose all together, and it takes work and support to escape.

"Thank you Jesus for orchestrating circumstances that made me work hard to move through the grief. Thank you for the support You Yourself provided in Yourself and through Your people who prayed, hugged me through tears, and just walked with me. Thank you that my life can be a testimony to the fact that her death wasn't a waste. Help me to continue to honor her story with my story by submitting to Your story for us both. In the same way Father, may my life be a testimony to the fact that Your death wasn't a waste either. May the good in my life always reflect Your glory and my sin testify to Your grace and forgiveness. Continue to use it all, Lord--the ugly deaths and beautiful births and everything in between. Use it all and use me too, Father."