Waves

It's the day before we leave my parents' house, and I keep having wrong thoughts. Thoughts like, "What else do I need to buy before we go?" Nothing, Gina, because they have Target where you're going. "What do the kids need for the plane?" There IS no plane. "Do we need an extra box for all the stuff we've accumulated this summer?" Um, actually, that's true, we do. It just doesn't have to fit airline standards.

We're not accustomed to this new normal, when leaving this house doesn't mean enduring 24 hours of traveling hurtling through the air in a pressurized metal tube and landing on the other side of the ocean. Now it means enduring 24 hours in a car and ending up at "home."

On the packing and shopping side, this is a relief, even if it means my "I can pack this suitcase to within 1-2 pounds of 50 without using a scale out of sheer practice" skills will go to waste. But last night, Ethan reminded me that it's not just on the surface level that this requires some adjustment.

Right before bed, Ethan tends to evaluate how he's feeling and give me an update (he is currently vying for "most emotionally cognizant and articulate teenage boy on the planet"). Generally, he finds he's feeling some anxiety about the upcoming school year. This time he became aware that part of his anxiety stems from the fact that all this packing and preparing makes him feel like he really IS getting ready for that long haul to China, and it's sad that we aren't. I'm sad too.

Grief. It comes in waves, like you're standing at the edge of the ocean and you don't know when the water will come up and cover your toes, or when it will surprise you by washing up to your knees. You could stand there all day and not have it touch you, and then in a moment it soaks you.

But I feel like the tide is going out. The waves are smaller. We sometimes see them coming. They don't knock us down anymore, just get us a little wet.

So that's how we're feeling as we prepare again to head back. I'm off to make one more trip to Walmart. Until we get to Florida, that is.

Acquainted with grief

This past year, through a variety of means, I feel like I have become more acquainted with grief. I am often caught off guard by how quickly I am brought to tears by a song on the radio, a gracious comment from a friend, a conversation with a loved one, ponderings about all that we have been through this year.

This reminds me of a couple things: first, of Much Afraid from Hind's Feet on High Places. She is given two companions which are Sorrow and Suffering. When I first read that book, I was in college and I can't say I was much acquainted with sorrow or suffering. The argument could be made that I really don't know them now either. I would say I am coming to know them.

That's what "acquainted" means, after all. It's from the Latin, "to come to know." I believe most people want to avoid sorrow and suffering. They even believe that as Christians we are meant to avoid them, not to experience them, that if we do we are somehow lacking faith. Me, I just want to avoid them because they aren't much fun.

But my other thought about being acquainted with grief is: Jesus was. In Isaiah 53:3, it says he was "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." I find it interesting that of all the things we could be told about Him, we know that. I don't doubt that Jesus was a man who exuded joy, who could throw His head back and laugh. But we are told specifically that He was no stranger to sorrow and grief. Why? I think to tell us, "It's ok. This is part of the journey."

I feel like my heart can't even wrap itself around this knowledge completely, beyond, "This is a good thing." If Jesus knew it, He knows what it is like for me, and He knows that it is working something necessary and good in my heart. Most of the time, when I rub up against grief I am grateful (although I confess when it comes in the presence of others it throws me because I'm still not particularly comfortable with falling apart unexpectedly). I am grateful because I sense that it means my heart is being opened by this, that it's hopefully developing in me a greater capacity to enter in to the grief of others and to say, "I am coming to know this too."