Sorrow

“How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” – Psalm 13:2

Last week we were starting our homeschool day when Elijah became inordinately upset over something relatively minor. It turned out I hadn’t done something exactly the way his kinder teacher had. Do you miss her? I asked. He nodded, and suddenly his anger melted into tears. Somehow the reality of what we’ve all lost hit me as I sat there. I couldn’t really tell him he would get to see her again soon. I just held him as he cried. 

Grief is so often a postscript for me. I busy myself with making the best of things, creating and carrying out action plans, thinking about how much better we have it than so many others. But as my kids teach me, it is okay to be sad. The sadness is there, and sometimes it must be held gently and given space. Elijah ended up drawing a picture of his classroom we sent to his teacher, a little memorial that included all his favorite parts of the room: the rocking chair where she sat, the rainbow rug, the smartboard with penguins on it, blue window drapes and the peace table. If I were to draw a picture of all the things I miss about our old life, in it would be coffee shops. Friends around a dinner table. Our fifth-grader graduating from elementary school. Our son striding off to swim practice in his parka, loaded with all his gear. Our church sanctuary, filled with people and music. 

I wrote about this psalm near the start of our one-year reading adventure, but this time around, I find myself not wanting to think past verse two. I am consistently amazed by David’s ability not only to acknowledge his sorrow, but to sit with it in God’s presence. The thing about grief is that it’s so lonely. No one really understands how it feels. Sometimes I picture it like an ocean that I sink into, an underwater place from which I can gesticulate, but not speak distinctly. When I’m there, it’s hard to describe how I feel. And what I want there aren’t words anyway. I want presence, a hand to hold in the dark, and it seems to me that is what David has with his God.

There are new, surprisingly good things growing up out of this time. If I were to draw a picture of our lives now, it would be full of unique memories that will likely never happen again. But I’m finding it’s good to be as intentional about our grief as we are about our gratitude. If the one opens our eyes to the gifts of this new time, the other allows us to acknowledge the losses we bear. And when we pray our grief to God, we experience his presence and allow him to work in us in that place.