Honest Grief

Each detail made the truth more horrifying than the first. A five year old beautiful little girl, adopted into a loving family dedicated to serving Christ - killed by a terrible accident in her own driveway. A family celebrating a graduation, now struggling to understand how such terror forced its way into their home. I have never met the Steven Curtis Chapman family but I know their hearts. I know the mother better than most of her closest friends. I know the unending ache in her chest, the tears that will not stop, the desperate longing for just a few more minutes with her sweet little girl. I know she has just taken the first steps of the longest trail she will ever travel. And yet, as well as I know her sorrow, she carries an even greater burden as she will try to help her son experience God's mercy and comfort in ways few of us will ever need.

Several people have asked if we have sent the Chapman family our book, Treasures in Darkness, or our Loss of a Loved One CD interview. Certainly as God opens up doors, we will offer our encouragement. But for now, this dear family needs to be given the freedom to cry out to God, to lament, to plead for His mercy and comfort, and yes, even and perhaps most of all, to freely admit their disappointment with His plans for them. There will be great expectation in the Christian community for them to step up to the plate and display only strength and deep faith, to never question God's love or presence. I plead with their friends to protect them from such expectations and to guard their need to lament in the wilderness. For it is in the darkness of this frightening place that their understanding of God's love will grow deep and wide.

A friend of Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, once said, "The woman who has no experiences in the dark has no secrets to share in the light." Shortly after the death of our son, Mark, this statement challenged me with a choice. Would I accept midnight sorrow as an opportunity for God to reveal his secrets of the darkness? Or would I refuse to open my eyes and hands to treasures designed to turn my heart toward him? In time, desperation to understand my heavenly Father and experience his power drove me to place my hope in what I know about him, not in what I do not know. That's when I began to more clearly experience the treasures in the darkness and riches stored in secret places.

Learning to see when the lights went out took me back to the foundations of my faith, where I unpacked each belief and examined it through the grid of God's Word. I needed to know that what I had believed and taught for more than twenty-five years was absolute truth. For years and through tear-filled eyes, I searched for God's presence everywhere and in every event. No detail was insignificant. It still isn't.

In an article in Today's Christian Woman, Mary Beth Chapman (http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/2003/sepoct/1.40.html) tells the story of adopting two of her children and how their entrance into her life helps her fight clinical depression. I love her honesty in sharing this part of her life. I have to believe that God gave her the courage to share so transparently in preparation for this moment when deep darkness would fall and threaten to pull her down into an endless abyss of despair. Because of her honesty, I'm praying that her closest friends will encourage her to remember God's past faithfulness, but also give her freedom to wail before her God if she is struggling to reconcile His love with His sovereignty.

Grief is hard work. Honest grief can take us deeper into the heart of God than we have ever experienced.