Five Years
It’s been five years since my son departed this world. While I haven’t slow-cooked my way into any epiphanies in the last five years, there is a lot to reflect on. Here are a few of those reflections:
The passage of time is shockingly fast. If I’m being honest, I think this has less to do with grief and loss and more to do with just getting old. But the break-neck speed of life often mingles with grief for us since Asher was only 9 years old at the time of his passing. In the early days of grief, there was a lot of “Oh, he would have enjoyed _____ today.” And we still experience that occasionally. But now there’s a lot more of “He would be _______ today.” Those little gut punches seem to be the majority now. For example, he would be halfway through his freshman year of high school by now. There are a lot of “firsts” he didn’t get to experience that just pop up.
When our daughter went to her first school dance a couple of months ago - a “sock hop” dance for the 5th grade - there was a moment where I thought, “Oh… Asher would have done that a few years ago, and he probably would’ve had a blast dancing around and being generally silly as he liked to do.” And though I didn’t go sob in a corner because of a 5th grade dance, it’s was just one of a countless little cuts. We watch as his family and friends grow up and blinding speed… but not him.
But for me, as a follower of Jesus, even this experience of the passage of time is laced with hope. The darkness is coming to an end - swiftly. The dawn is coming, and it’s coming faster with each day. I feel like I can just see the first faint rays of the sun coming over the horizon, and that’s exciting.
Grief will be by my side till I draw my last breath. There’s no “getting over it.” I’m typically a “Bah humbug” kind of fellow around the holidays, but in Christmas of all places, I find comfort. We call it the incarnation. Among all the religions of the world, Christianity is the only one where our God became fully human. We talk of how Christ took on the sins of His people on the cross - crucial and central to our faith. But he also took on the human experience within a broken world including the hard stuff like emotional and physical pain, grief, loss, betrayal, and disappointment. “A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Is how the prophet Isaiah described the Messiah. Jesus understands not just because he knows all things, but because he’s been there - an empathy borne of experience. And in His understanding, being near to our sorrow, He can bring healing to “bind up the brokenhearted” as Isaiah put it.
I hate to admit it, but I can’t do life alone. Within weeks of Asher’s passing, Covid burst onto the world stage. I’m not a particularly social person (an understatement if you ask my wife), but I felt like I was dying inside from grief while all of our meaningful human interactions went from feast to famine. In one of his letters to the Corinthians, Paul described followers of Christ in the church like parts of a body, not only because they have unique functions like eyes seeing an ears hearing, but also because they depend on each other for the successful functioning of the whole. I need - really and truly need - brothers and sisters to grieve and rejoice with; to bring my whole self and be received with grace and even to be corrected in kindness and love; to lock arms with and charge into battle. I’m absolutely terrible at all of that, but by God’s grace I’m growing.
God’s presence is everything. Surprisingly Covid became a catalyst of grace to me. I would spend hours, usually on my back porch, pouring my heart out in prayer. And God was gracious to meet me there - being present in my cries and weeping with me understanding, while also binding up my wounds, filling me with hope, and setting my sails for the next season.
I have present and future hope. Psalm 23 reminds me that Jesus walks alongside me through the valley of the shadow of death, and that His full presence awaits me on the other side. Through the eyes of faith, I can look to what is unseen, so I don’t lose heart but instead I have hope, knowing that I are being renewed day by day, and that these afflictions are preparing for me an eternal weight of glory, that will make these afflictions that are so horrible and crushing, seem light and momentary by comparison. God’s grace is sufficient, and He is shown to be powerful in my weakness. (1 Corinthians 4:16-18; 2 Corinthians 12:9)