Through The Sea

I look for him everywhere. This morning I dreamt the clock turned back and he was beside me for a few stolen days. We were driving to Florida together, for his funeral, him in the driver seat like always, me trying not to cry, hanging on for dear life to a few gifted moments with him, holding his hand, hearing his voice. 

It’s a blessing and a heartbreak to dream about Rob.

This morning a man’s voice filtering through the insulated walls of my room sounded just like Rob’s when he stood outside talking to neighbors. “Yeah?” was the short remark, but the familiar echoes of it reverberated in my aching soul.

How many ways are there to say how much I miss my husband?

Spirit to spirit we can still communicate sometimes. That’s new information for me, never needed before now. Our spirits never die, so it makes sense. But it’s unexpected when it happens. Sometimes I simply sense his presence, other times, like when I was watching the kids on the zipline last week, I know in my heart what he’s speaking to me.

Hearing God’s voice is as vague an experience as listening to Rob’s.

Right now, while my attention is easily demolished by loss and memories, it’s hard to “be still and know.” When I try to sit quietly, I become agitated and get up, looking for something to do. Some way of distracting myself from the pain. But pain follows you, like a needy dog, demanding your attention until it has its say and you meet its need.

Last night I gave in to the pain, letting my grief vent for a long time until, exhausted, I sat down on the sofa and waited. “I’ll try again,” I told my Creator. “I’ll sit here and stay put for as long as I can.” I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through a nose swollen from crying, letting my heart rate slow in the quiet space. My counselor has suggested that I lean into God’s love, asking Him to make His love known to me. I didn’t voice that last night. I just waited, trying not to become impatient, unsure if I was on hold with God or if I’d soon hear a prompt to leave Him a message.

It feels that way sometimes.

I decided I wasn’t moving. If God wanted to tell me something, this was His chance. His silence has made me question His love for me, even causing me to wonder if His attention span is as short as mine. Does He even know how much I’m suffering, alone in this room surrounded by pictures of Rob and me, his career on the wall where I hung his helmet, and only the sound of my own weeping? Why doesn’t He say something? Make Himself known. How can He ignore one for whom He died?

How long will I be stuck in the quicksand of grief?

I sat there. Spent from my tears and questions. Waiting. “Put up your feet,” I sensed Him say after several minutes. Well, that’s not very spiritual. If I did that, I might fall asleep and miss whatever He might say next. “Put up your feet,” I was reminded. Fine, I sighed. I pushed the button beside me and did as I was told. I was more comfortable, I had to admit. Relaxing a little more, my eyes remained shut and I waited. Listening.

There’s a place where I’ve always met God in prayer where I enter deeply into His rest. It hasn’t happened in a long time, my life has been so wound up and traumatized for the last year and a half. Between all the craziness of 2020, living at four addresses in the last six months—which has also caused a lot of my mail to implode in frustration—and losing Rob, sitting still until I sink into that peaceful, encapsulating rest in God’s presence has been an impossibility.

But I found it last night. Sitting here alone in this quiet room with my feet up. Waiting. Disconnected from my environment by the sheer act of closing my eyes and putting my feet up, I felt for a while as though I were floating. No pressure on my body or heart, it was as though I was being carried gently. And I knew I was. I sank into God’s rest and heard Him again. “I know you feel abandoned. But My arms are around you. You couldn’t imagine how much worse it would feel if I wasn’t carrying you through this. I am here when you can’t see Me. I will not, I will not, I will not, under any circumstance, relax My hold on you or let you down. Assuredly not.” The verse I’ve put on my refrigerator ran through my mind. Hebrews 13:5.

After a while, finally understanding a tiny bit that God refuses to leave me alone no matter what the enemy of my soul tries to tell me, I opened my eyes, put both feet on the floor, and came to the table to read for a while. In her book about grieving, Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest who suffered huge losses in one particularly bad year, wrote that the Psalms are full of lament, a synonym for complaint.

“Psalms of lament—both communal and individual—are the most common type of psalm in the Psalter. They voice disappointment, anger, sadness, pain, deep confusion, and loss. If our gathered worship expresses only unadulterated trust, confidence, victory, and renewal, we are learning to be less honest with God than the Scriptures themselves are. . . Lament is an expression of sorrow. To learn to lament is to learn to weep. But it is more than that. In the lament psalms, the psalmist holds God to God’s own promises.” She cites Psalm 44 as one example before continuing.

“It is better to come to God with sharp words than to remain distant from Him, never voicing our doubts and disappointments. Better to rage at the Creator than to smolder in polite devotion. God did not smite the psalmist. Through the Psalms, He dares us to speak to Him bluntly.” (Prayer In The Night, Tish Harrison Warren)

Christians, she wrote, have for centuries prayed the Psalms because they express the depth of our humanity, from extreme joy to extreme sadness and everything in between, and lead our broken hearts back to the One Who loves us more deeply than the pain we experience.

So, I opened the Bible that has left me feeling confused for the last five months, ever since my world exploded into a billion shards of glass. A bookmarked page led me to Psalm 77. I read it, praying it aloud, sobbing while my vision blurred the words on the pages at times. And when I got to the end, I was stunned. The verse was marked in my Bible, but I'd forgotten.

“Your way in delivering Your people was through the sea, and Your paths through the great waters, yet Your footsteps were not traceable, but were obliterated.”

He has been with me all this time, but He doesn’t even leave a footprint. Or a fingerprint. Or an autograph. He carries me every second even though I didn’t realize it. His intangible presence is present, nevertheless. He doesn’t forget His promises. He doesn’t become angry when I rail at Him over the unfairness of what has happened to me. He does not abandon me when I lament or question, holding Him to His promises and speaking bluntly to Him.

God’s not afraid of my honesty. And honesty is not a sin.

I miss Rob’s voice. I miss his touch. His face. The familiarity of his presence. Everything that was once my normal. Nothing is normal now. The quiet of his absence is so difficult to endure and I often feel alone in my situation. I guess that’s what’s normal about grief, feeling that way.

Jesus felt that way, too, more than once. But on one famous occasion, in a voice so loud everyone around him stopped and took notice, He accused His Father. “My God, My God, Why? Why have You forsaken Me?” Even though His Father had not forsaken Him. It was simply how Jesus felt in that moment. “For God was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world unto Himself, not counting men’s sins against them.” 2 Corinthians 5:19

The “why?” of my life now haunts me, but I’m in good company. And at the end of that chapter in Psalms 77, David reminds his lonely self and all the lonely people who, like me, are comforted by his honesty,

“You led Your people like a flock . . .”.

God is here. I’m not forsaken either.

It is just my grief.