A Challenge

It's a challenge to sit with grief. To simply sit with it as two lovers on the front porch swing. To allow it to expose the very depths of you. The lowest valley of despair to the highest peak of pride and self-sufficiency.

To embrace grief as you would an old friend, something familiar and known, often takes more courage than I can muster. It utilizes every ounce of strength I have and it demands trust. I have to believe that I can reach the very bottom of it and be convinced that on the other side of this dark place, there is light, there is hope. That there is another side, even to this pain that is etched in my heart like scrimshaw on ivory.

To journey to the valley of mourning, I have to trust my Good Shepherd to meet me there, to be convinced that this journey is for my good. I must rely on Him to carry me when I am too weak or too weary to traverse one more step.  

I have to have a willing heart to face that fiery furnace, to enter it, to beg my God to carry me where I have no courage to go. I must be willing to face truth, to be exposed, to hear the sweet refrain from my Shepherd singing over me, a love song that reaches deeper than my darkest pain.

Otherwise, I will run. I will hide behind my facade of "Fine" and "Good" and any other place that I deem safe, deem secured from all invasions of what I am sure is marauding sorrow. I will pretend that all is well, while frantically stuffing and camouflaging what is sharp and difficult to veil.

If I choose to ignore the challenge to come and befriend the ugly and unbearable, known as grief, then I am choosing to ignore the only One able, capable, to rescue and soothe me with His endless, unyielding love.

The challenge has been issued: Ignore and hear mere echoes of His grace or embrace the lowest valley and know that God is near.