This passage has become so real to me in the past two weeks of suffering the loss of a loved one. Sorrow. Comfort. Praise. These are stones I lay reverently in the road. They are stained with tears and my heart aches painfully as I lay them down but it aches equally with joy as with sorrow. It is indeed better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
There are times when I feel I am just a phone call, a click of the mouse away from those we have left behind. When death strikes your family and you are on the other side of the Atlantic, it feels like you are light years away, completely cut off, utterly helpless and alone. In those moments of after shock I felt like gravity didn't exist anymore. There was no solid ground for my feet, no oxygen for my lungs. I felt like a large chunk of my universe had just gone hurtling away into space and left this shocking, gaping void. Pietro was on his phone with our care team back home, while I sat there clutching my own phone, stunned.
In that moment the phone in my hand rang. The caller ID showed it was a messenger call from a friend of encouragement. I answered it, knowing that comfort would be on the other end of the line. Imagine my surprise when no one voice answers my tearful greeting but rather a whole sanctuary of voices, worshiping; our church family back home. I could picture my friend standing there, arm outstretched to capture their corporate praise, and I felt those voices envelope me as though I were in the room. My heart calmed, my breath returned, and though tears streamed down my face I felt gravity restored as Pastor Darrell's voice spoke from the mic and the congregation responded with laughter and camaraderie. I felt like I had been wrapped in a comforter.
The call was to take on a whole new depth of comfort when I learned that my friend had not called me purposefully and she most certainly was not holding her phone up for me to share in this moment. Her phone was on the bench beside her, where she had left it after sending me a condolence text upon hearing the news of my loss. It's possible that somehow she "accidentally" touched the phone in just the right way that it put through a messenger call to me, but I don't believe for a moment that it was an "accident". The God of all comfort reached down and connected me to home in an intensely powerful way when and how I most needed it.
This week I was able to stand surrounded by my church family in the flesh. At the very end of our service we sang "Good, Good Father". As we sang the words "Because you know just what we need before we say a word" I was just overcome by how deeply He loves me. How profound His comfort is. How deep his own sorrow and loss was in handing over his beloved son to suffer and die, rejected and alone. How deep the Father's love for us!
"Love so undeniable, I can hardly speak;
Peace so unexplainable I can hardly think."
Where I came feeling stripped of joy, I return feeling cloaked in comfort.
