Eight Months Closer….
“Do you have a brother?”
“Yes, I do,” I answered. How can a 4-year-old ask a question that is like a punch in the gut? It was an innocent enough question for anyone to ask, but the little girl I nanny had been asking every day since I started the job.
“Is he at your house?”
I started cleaning up her toys, so she couldn’t see me fighting back tears. “No….he’s not at my house….he’s at his home. His real home.” I could feel her little hand on my shoulder and I turned around to look at her. Big blue eyes stared back at me, curious, innocent, naive.
“When will he be back?”
Another punch in the gut.
“…I told you yesterday, remember? My brother is in heaven. He’s not coming back here, but one day, we get to go be with him and live with Jesus forever.”
“In heaven? So he died?”
“…..Yes.”
“Why are you crying?”
If I’ve learned anything through the last eight months of grieving and struggle, it is this: Time doesn’t heal. Until time – God’s perfect time – brings back the dead, this world stays broken. We stay broken. And it hurts.
The pain is always there, dull, throbbing. Grief is not normal yet. I don’t count eight plates for dinner as often as I used to, but it still feels wrong to count seven.
Yesterday, July 22nd, was the eighth month anniversary of my brother, Isaiah, meeting our Lord. In some ways, the time feels an eternity….it seems such a crushing weight of time since I’ve felt my brother’s arms folded around my waist, since I’ve glanced over at him in the passenger seat of my car, singing Phantom of the Opera in his cracking, ten-year-old voice, since I’ve woken up to the sound of him scratching away on his cello D-string in the room next door.
But in other ways, the grief feels as numb and raw as it did the day he passed. As heavy as it felt a week later. As devestating, now in July, as it was debilitating in December. Not much has grown over the wounds.There’s been more healing on the upturned earth of my brother’s grave, than there has been in the aching of my own soul.
When I came to the realization that faith didn’t make this hurt less, I was comforted by the fact that in this, at least, my faith would grow. And it is true, my faith has been melted, twisted, molded, and refined, through eight months of being caressed by hard, perfect fingers. I serve a God full of severe mercy – mercy so beautiful, so perfect, so loving, that it envelops those He loves and draws them to Himself through the fire, guiding the pain with the promise of deliverance. But whether a day, a week, eight months, a year….the fire still burns.
To use a different illustraition: “Life is too hard to take straight,” one Christian sister puts it. “I couldn’t take life straight; I would die under the weight of grief.”
God doesn’t ask us to take life straight. The blinding, horrible, sin-cursed draught was drunk to the dregs by Him, so that for us it may be strained through mercy. He strains the drink – each drop of pain, each ounce of torment, every tear, every sigh, every fresh crack in the broken heart – He measures, and gives, and He weeps with us, and drinks with us. We have never drained the cup. He will never removed the seive. Only once has He done that, for one Man alone, and that was for Himself.
This cup was His before ever it was mine – and it was His more fully than I can even imagine, so that one day, I need never taste it again. Isaiah’s already there. For him, the pain is gone.
In the last moment of Isaiah’s life on this earth, a single tear fell from his eye and slid down his cheek and he’s never shed a single one since. It was bottled up with all the rest, and the cork was closed, and the cheek carressed with the Savior’s hand. When he breathed in again – no ventilator this time, but all on his own – it was to fill his lungs bursting with the air of Heaven. Closed lids opened unto glory, and the first thing he saw was Christ.
It has been eight months. And now we’re eight months closer. Take my tears and bottle them up, Lord Jesus. I leave the cork with You.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Beautiful post. He is Immanuel, “God With Us”, forever and always. Love you, Sister, and I’m looking forward to heaven right along with you. ❤❤❤
Thank you, sweet Sister. Love you <3
Oh but Sydney he *is* at your home.
“These all died in faith . . . and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth – looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” You are not of this world even as he is no longer of this world. He sees presently what you know by faith to be true and which is already yours in Christ, therefore be patient; establish your heart: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. You also will soon be loosed from the bondage of corruption and be delivered from the body of this death into the glorious liberty of the children of God. What a glorious day that will be.
“For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Romans 8:20-23
I can only imagine that this longing has been yours and your family’s in a special way these past 8 months.
May the Lord be with you all.
If I may also share a portion of this message again; I pray that it will be an encouragment.
“…I do not mean to be crude, but I want to say this, and if possible encourage you a little; that it likely will not get better for some time yet. It takes a long time to fully grieve the loss of one so dear. Your grief over his loss will likely never be fully complete this side of Glory. In five or ten years you may see or hear something that will remind you of your sweet little brother and you will turn your head expecting for a moment to see him, and in an instant you will be right back where you are today with all the grief, emotion, tears, confusion and shock that you no doubt feel today. I know that sometimes people think that something is wrong with them when they cannot “get over” losing someone, but the witness of Scripture is that Isaac was not comforted until three years after the death of his mother. He was not comforted. Can you imagine that? [I have no doubt this has been your experience these past 8 months.] He had the faith of his father, of whom it is witnessed in Hebrews that he believed that God could raise the dead (for in Isaac shall thy seed be called), yet he grieved, and that bitterly, but he was not without hope. Paul also uses strong language when he talks about how he would have been affected by the death of Epaphroditus saying that he would have had “sorrow upon sorrow” (Philippians 2:27). Scripture is not shy or reserved about the grief of believers.
Know that in your grief you are in good company with Isaac, David, Paul (Philippians 3:18), and of course, the Man of Sorrows himself who will one day raise us together with himself in that glory which is yet to be revealed to those who [treasure] his apearing.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
…
Rejoice that your name is in the Book of Life and that God is using this heavy and grievous trial to conform you to the glorious image of His Son.”
N.H., 12/16/2017
Thank you so much, Nicholas, for your continued comfort and prayers for our family. It is our home, indeed! What a glorious thought.
Blessings to you and yours in Christ,
Sydney