1Th 5:18 In everything give thanks…

One year, 5 months, 24 days ago, I lost someone I dearly loved. Nothing prepares you for the grief of losing someone to death; nothing quite prepares you for the absolute, complete devastation- not even the Christian faith. It is only afterwards, when you are able to breathe again, and bend forward to pick up the pieces- only then might your faith kick back in (if you’re lucky) and allow you to start believing in the hope of a future meeting. Before that point is darkness… And that can last a long time.

Add to that the certain knowledge of wrong-doing. The sure knowledge of the futility of our sin nature. Because you don’t know the future, you make decisions that have far-reaching consequences. Because I did not even know my dear one had died for three whole months afterwards- and even then I discovered it by accident. Why? Many strange reasons- not least because we had fought. Because we had stopped speaking. I cannot now describe the trauma of discovering he had in fact “known” he might die- he had leukaemia, you see- and had said nothing to me. How could he keep this fact from me, of all people?! Me, who loved him above everyone else! And yet he did, and he is not here to answer…

There are many questions, many more even than the ones raised above, and while the months since it all happened have gradually grown happier again, and my heart lighter, I have had periods of deep grief. What has kept me stuck is the questions; it gets better, but the questions are there, always. And every time I begin to ask them again, these questions with no answers, I fall back into the pit of despair. And so it was very recently, until a friend had to give me a kick. And it registered.

What is enough, really? When have I grieved “enough”? When am I allowed to give myself permission to let go, to leave (emotionally speaking) that horrible place of blame and anger, that was the last few months of my relationship with him? I know what the real answer is, too (which grieves me, because I have not known the answers to easier questions). Enough WOULD HAVE BEEN for us not to have fought. Enough WOULD HAVE BEEN to have walked with him through the trial of his illness and then his death. Enough WOULD HAVE BEEN for God not to have let him get sick in the first place, and not to have let him die. That’s what enough WOULD HAVE BEEN, to me… And so it has been impossible to fully let go of the pain. Because as long as we hold up some ideal against the reality of life, we are living for that ideal -which is, after all, only an illusion. In truth, life is not the black-and-white issue we want it to be. The cold hard truth is MK fell sick and died. The cold hard truth is that I wasn’t at his side because we fought- partly my fault, partly his. The cold hard truth is I will now maybe never know what motivated him not to reach out to me when he was ill- whether anger, pride, bitterness, or more healthy feelings- the desire not to have me worry or suffer with him. There are no answers- not now, anyway- and if I live fifty years, I cannot keep asking these questions.

Enough must be that he lived. Enough must be to celebrate the fact of our relationship (and it was wonderful). Enough must be to trust that God knew what He was doing at every point in that situation- even in allowing us to meet, when in such a very short time MK would be taken away- and enough has absolutely got to be that MK’s passing was within the scope of God’s perfect wisdom. Enough must also be to accept my part and MK’s part in what happened at the end, and enough must be to know that to err is part of the human condition. (I have a suspicion that my old perfectionism was rearing its pretty little head, and I have been trying to change what has already happened- wishing and wishing that I can somehow fix what has gone by.) He was less than perfect, my MK; I am less than perfect, Lord help me. But God’s grace steps in at that point, and I am made enough.

So it was enough- more, even, than enough. Sometimes, when grief comes, you look at the thing that was given, and ask if the Lord had lost it for a few moments. In the turmoil of losing something or someone you love, you convince yourself that it would have been better not to have “gone there” at all. But yes, it was a gift- from start to end, even the parts I did not understand. How can I thank the Lord for the good and perfect, and not for the parts I did not like so much? How can I thank the Lord for the rose, and not the thorn that is part of it? It was enough, Lord, and more. I am battling my nature here, battling the instinct that cries out at the “injustice” of it; but I am learning that enough may not quite be what I once thought it was. And so to give thanks for all that was, such as it was, and to live forward.