But there’s more to me than loss.
I’ve shared a little of my story, but just like you, there is more to me than the pain I have endured.
I am a homeschooling mama of four little women in the foothills of Appalachia. My days are filled with math lessons and toddler spills, puberty-fueled conversations and temper tantrums.
This parenting thing is dizzying. But we love it.
We also love the Church.
And we really love when the Church operates as she should.
But, too often as the Church, we are uncomfortable when confronted with experiences or emotions that do not conform to our unspoken expectation of what it means to be “godly.”
Things like prolonged grief.
Chronic pain or depression.
Crippling anxiety.
Or a pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction and longing.
Often when we encounter these emotions, we feel awkward and hesitant, as if we lack a peg on which to hang these experiences. So we try to fit them on a hook that cannot bear their weight—or worse: we sweep them under the rug.
What unnecessary pain and suffering we inflict by doing so.
Unnecessary, because there are hooks for every aspect of the human experience in the Gospel (including extended grief and sorrow).
And there is so much potential in His design of Christian community for healing and growth.
We have missed so many opportunities to grieve, to suffer, to lament, and to mourn well (and by “well,” I mean thoroughly)—and we miss each other in the process.
But we can do better.
Let’s create spaces where grief is honored, where healing is unhurried, where growth is a process built upon relationship and not a timetable.
God meets us in our darkest places, able to carry the weight of our experiences in ways we never can. And He has called His people to reflect the same:
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
—Galatians 6:2
What a wonderful opportunity we have. Let’s take it up in the power of His strength, His deep compassion, and His overwhelming love for the neediest among us.
He does not despise the needy—and neither should we.
