I stood behind my two daughters yesterday as my 13 year old watched her very best friend be buried into the ground.
Not good.
Harmful.
I watched as the sweet mama of this little girl wept a silent sob of brokenness, to where you could actually see the tears drip from the end of her chin onto her chest.
Not good.
Harmful.
I sat in a gymnasium full of people this very morning and watched that same baby girl push through her gut wrenching sobs as she verbally honored her very best friend.
Not good.
Harmful.
Through all of this, I’ve heard people make statements that I myself have made so many times before. Mostly quoting scriptures. Statements that are meant to comfort, but in all honesty…they usually feel like shards of glass ripping another small gash within the heart. Or, they hit an empty heart and drop to the ground like a lead brick.
“All things work together for good…”
“God has a plan for all of this…”
“God has plans for your ‘good and not harm’…”
Do they? Do they really? Does He? Does He really?
We spit those scriptures out like we know what we’re talking about. We don’t.
We spit those scriptures out like they are “one size fits all” and apply to everyone. They don’t.
If I could go back to every time I’ve ever uttered those words to someone during their time of loss, I would vomit them up and choose to simply love quietly. Love with action (as I saw many do today) instead of self elevating words disguised as encouragement.
I do, in fact, believe every word in the pages of God breathed scripture. I believe it without hesitation. I simply don’t believe that we have it all figured out like we portray we do. Even when we’re quick to say, “we don’t really know for sure what this means”, we eventually use it in a context as though we do. Maybe without even realizing it, but we do.
God most definitely has a plan. And “every day ordained for us was written in His book before even one of them came to be”. What in the world?? Jayden’s tragic last day on this earth was written in His book before it came to be?? Ugh…it’s just too much to comprehend. Thankfully, that’s where faith comes in. We don’t comprehend it, we just believe it.
Can we just please be careful not to say those things to someone who is grieving with fresh grief?
When you research the meaning of some of the words of those passages in the language they were originally written in, it seems that those passages are talking about our hope for the future. Our eternal good. However, we so very much long for them to mean some sort of earthly good as well.
Here’s all I can come up with, and I'm taking it…holding tightly to it...
Yesterday, as I stood behind my 13 year old while she sat and watched her very best friend lowered into the ground, I also watched my 17 year old never leave her side. She stroked her hair and rubbed her back. She kissed her head and hugged her tight.
Good.
Not harmful.
Yesterday, as I watched that mama cry those tears of mourning, I stood in amazement as in the midst of her darkest day, as she buried her very own 13 year old baby girl, she comforted mine. Sat right beside her, rubbing her back instead of wiping those dripping tears from her face. Then, she did it again today. Indescribable.
Good.
Not harmful.
Today, as I watched not only my Aubri girl sob her way through her dedication to Jayden, but also several others, I also witnessed a type of family love that I honestly don’t believe I’ve seen before in my entire life. Ever. Jayden’s family is blended…step fathers, step moms, step sisters and brothers…but the love that every single one of them have for each other left me speechless. I honestly couldn’t comprehend it. Where was the awkwardness? Where was the dislike for one another? It wasn’t there. Only kindness. Only love. They all wept…every single one of them. And wept hard. But they wept together…loving and hugging each other all morning. It was clear to me that Jayden’s mama was at the center of that love.
Good.
Not harmful.
This earthly life we live is flooded with all manner of heartache…disease, death, financial disaster, broken relationships, mental illness, emotional trauma…it’s endless. I’m reminding myself tonight of the fuller picture of one of those passages…just before Jeremiah tells of “God’s plan of good and not harm…of a hope and a future”, he tells us, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile…”. Did you catch that? Who sent them into exile? God did. The very One who has plans for good and not harm, sent them into captivity. It doesn’t begin very good, only harmful…yet ends with a hope for the future.
So for now, there is sadness. There is crying. There is grief. There is anger…much anger. There is confusion. There is fear. Not good. Harmful.
And we wait. We wait for the day when we can once again choose joy. We wait for a smile. For a laugh. For possible answers. We hold on to hope, and wait for the truth about those “plans for good, and not harm”, to surface one way or another.
