Withstanding the Wind

Just look outside this morning. The sky is clear. The sun is shining. The birds are welcoming the first signs of spring. Daffodils are bravely dancing in the cool morning air. Spring is coming! Why does it make me well up in tears. Any griever knows that answer. With every passing season, with every change - even in the weather - we move one step further into our own grief journey, one step away from the life the way we knew and loved, one step further into the unknown of life without someone we cherished.

This new season is coming and we must accept it. We can never go back, and we can never stay where we are. The only thing - and the best thing - to do is to move through to the unknown. Even with the changing seasons of our earth, we recognize that not every day will be a perfect 68 degrees with a slight breeze from the southwest and no humidity - if you live where I live. We know that with warmer weather can come turbulent storms, devastating floods, and vengeful ice storms just when we think cold weather is gone for good. Trees come down, rivers flood,and we discover again that we are not in control. We must sit back and take stock of the storm, salvage what we can, and start again.

We don't like to start again. We get weary. We liked where we were. Ah, there we go again. We are trying to "go back" and we can never go back. Say it. We can never go back. But we can remember with gratitude the many days of balmy weather and carefree days. We can know and trust that those days will come again - once we work through our storm. And that's the hard part.

Grief can be as traumatic as Hurricane Sandy was to our beautiful Northeast coast. Our lives, like those beach homes, are ripped apart from the foundation, tilting on the brink of crumbling into raging waters, fragmented beyond repair. Grief pulls us down into currents of despair, tosses us against rocks, and takes our breath away. We fear for our lives.

There is a story in the Bible where the disciples feared for their lives:

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” Mark 4:35-41

The key for us is the question Jesus posed to his disciples: "Why are you so afraid. Do you still have no faith?" And we must ask ourselves in the midst of our own storm, "Do I have faith?" When we put our trust in Jesus,we can know that even the winds and waves of grief will obey him.