Speechless

I heard a song today that stayed with me. It's a song about grief, and grief is a relationship I've had to maintain, whether I wanted to or not. Grief demands attention. If I ignore my "friend" Mr. Grief, he comes knocking, barging in, even breaking down the door if I pretend that I'm busy or not at home.

I guess I kept listening to this song because it wasn't sappy, overproduced and sung in a minor key (though perhaps it is and I'm too musically tone-deaf to know that). It's raw, painfully honest, and doesn't tie up feelings into tidy conclusions and a pretty bow. Instead, Johannes just tells it like it is. I get that.

Here are the words. And here's the link to the song:

Found in a maze
As time is ever streaming
Left where it lays
It won't decay, this feeling
All alone, with everything that's born
The gods display their scorn

I won't run away
It only gets me closer
I cut through the day
A murdering of meaning
Either way, endless ways to say
I'm speechless when I pray

I hope I make it home
I hope I make it home
Ah, oh, whoa

Torn by a stitch
The fabric underneath it
Hooked on that glitch
That breathes to life within it
Flesh and bone, carried by the tone
The resonating drone

Lost in a maze
As time is ever stopping
Right where it lays
It's wings clipped by the ceiling
All alone, with everything that's gone
The devil in finest form

I hope I make it home
I hope I make it home
Ah, oh, whoa

Thankfully, that is not where I have remained, sitting with "the devil in finest form." Jesus has gently taken my hand and done what Job's friends do best: he merely sat with me in my grief, not saying anything. As the fog imperceptibly lifted at some point, he started speaking things into my life. Every day, something different. I could not possibly list them all here... nor do I need to. Each passage was like the manna in the desert for the wandering Israelites -- just enough for that day. It provided for that day's needs, nothing more. I would need to show up in the morning and be fed again. If I skipped a day here and there, the gnawing hunger would leave me dizzy and disoriented. Slowly, my strength came back, though now I walk with a limp.

This is the passage of late that gives my soul what it seeks:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls. (Jeremiah 6:16)

Grief, as miserable as it is, also tells me, when I am listening, that this life is not all there is... it is incomplete, sometimes empty, ultimately not satisfying. While that sounds hopeless and dark, it really is not. It is simply an issue of perspective. If you know that this life is not the end of the story, that there is more that you need to look to, then it may just be what you need to hear... Do not settle for this life, the present now. Instead, press on toward our real home.

I pray that Mr. Johannes does not remain speechless, though this sadness lasts longer than one expects -- and pops up its head now and again. I pray with him that he will indeed "make it home."

As 2010 comes to a close, I lovingly remember those over whom I have grieved, and still grieve... Claire, Matt, Andrew, Ruth... and the other things I've lost or had to let go of along the way. I enjoy priceless memories. I also feel the empty place where they once were, and refuse to fill those gaps with other things. I am grateful that I am no longer speechless.