As many of you now know, we lost our beloved son, Hayden on September 20th of this year. Two months into our grieving process, keeping myself busy seems to be key to having what I would call “good” days. Those are days when I can smile, I can laugh, and enjoy the abundant blessings that God has gifted us. Weekends on the other hand, they tend to be more difficult – if I have time to think, then my thoughts inevitably turn to Hayden. Weekends were the time we spent with him and the hole on Saturday mornings is particularly large.
In my last blog post I said that I would write about the signs that God gave us that Hayden was with him, and I will do that, but as I sit here today I wanted to talk a little bit about the journey my faith is taking right now. One of the most important aspects of my relationship with God has been the feelings of his overwhelming love that he so often places upon me. Everyone’s experience and relationship with God is different, but for me, it’s those moments when I am most close to him, in song or in prayer when I feel his love fill me and it always brings tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat and a fullness to my heart. But lately I find myself actively avoiding having these moments. I’m not trying to shut God out of my life and my heart, but my sorrow is still so fresh and my feelings are still so close to the surface.
I have even started to worry that maybe God will be angry or upset that I can’t find that closeness with him. But then he gave me a truth that I feel in the depth of my soul – the sorrow that I feel, the pain in my heart, he shares that with me. The reason I can’t get too close right now when I am mourning – it’s because he is grieving with me and our shared grief is simply too much for me.
Never for a single moment doubt that God doesn’t love you fiercely. When you have a relationship with God, he will share your joys and rejoice with you in your good fortune. And, when life is hard, he doesn’t fix our pain – he shares it with us. Every tear we cry, he cries with us. On those good days when I can smile and laugh – I feel God touch my heart gently to reassure me that he is here, and he will never leave. So in the pain of my loss, I have continued to receive God’s grace and love in the unexpected truth that he is walking this path right beside me. To read these things in the Bible is one thing – to live them first hand is something completely different.
My prayer for each of you is that God gives you the blessing of feeling his presence in your life in all of your moments – both joy and sorrow and the knowledge that he will never leave you either.
God Bless,
Meredith
finchmeredith1 