Grief, God, and Good Friday

Grief and God live close together in my heart.  It may be strange to associate the ultimate love in which we live and move and have our being, the ultimate dance of life, with the pain and loss, but the feelings echo each other, deep in my gut.  Both grief and grace begin with an overwhelming emotion that strips me bare, leaves me weeping and honest, and makes me new, again and again.

Grief came to me first through the loss of my father.  By most accounts, my father’s death at the age of 59, after a long and valiant fight with cancer, was not a tragedy.  My dad died surrounded by his family and at peace with the world.  He was so peaceful and wise that the hospital chaplain stopped by multiple times, just so Dad could cheer him up with his good humor and clear, witty vision.  My dad didn’t die in turmoil; we knew he loved us and he knew we loved him.  But he still died, and it still sucked--big time.

The moment I got the call, the one we were waiting for, the 3:00 am phone call to say, “Don’t rush home; he’s gone.  Take your time and make arrangements,” grief enveloped me.  It hurt, physically squeezing my heart in a cold, death-grip.   I felt like someone ripped open my guts and twisted them.  Although I knew the time was coming, I wasn’t prepared for the gut-punch and the heartache.  All my defenses crumbled and I was raw, open, naked to the emotion.  Somewhere in the midst of the pain, I thought, “This is what it feels like.”  I curled up in a ball and sobbed.  

In the midst of gut-wrenching grief, I also felt grace. During the days following my father’s death, I felt held in a divine grace.  I couldn’t figure out what was holding me together, but something was stitching my pain into scars to cover the holes in my soul.  Something was caring for me--I have to believe it was God.  Over time, grief mellowed; I became used to it like an ache.  An ache that stabs sometimes.  The death of a friend or a beloved pet kicks up the grief again, sharp and quick.  Sometimes, it comes without provocation; from the middle of nowhere, grief knocks me down, with a vengeance and very little warning.  When the pain surprised me, I recognize it.  I think, “Here it is again.”

When God invades my life, it follows the same pattern.  God-filled moments begin by knocking me down, breathless, as I think in the back of my mind, “This is what it feels like.” At first it is a shock, and later it reverberates with the same vibration.  The first time grace shocked me silent was on Good Friday.  Good Friday and Easter have an extra personal pain for me; it is the last time I saw my father alive.  Between Holy Week and May 7, the anniversary of his death, I hold my personal period of remembrance and mourning.  So, on my first Good Friday in the Episcopal Church, I was ready for the grief.  And through the pain, came God.

As I sat in the darkened, bare church, listening to the Gospel reading and the moving sermon, I was overcome. In the image of Jesus’s final sacrifice for all of mankind, I could feel my grief and the grief of the world, bound by love.  God-made-man, the divine incarnate, gave up his power to the evil of the world, laid down his life in scandalous surrender, crying out for his God.  Within in this exquisite pain, there was no rationalization, no mental gymnastics, no search for meaning.   I wept, my throat closed up, and my heart broke open.  The only real thought in my head was, “make me worthy of this sacrifice, Jesus.”  I knew Jesus had saved me, with all my pettiness, selfishness, and brokenness. I longed to be worthy of the immense gift of God’s love.  As I listened to sounds of soft crying in the dark, God held me in my grief, stitching my scars together with love.

Since then, grace overwhelms me at unexpected moments, cracking me open to let in the light, tearing my crutches away.  Sometimes it knocks me over, breathless.  Sometimes grace pins me down, holds me momentarily in eternity, vulnerable and raw, in order to accept the love of God.  Sometimes it is an ache, a longing, that calls me out of my worry and preoccupations into connection with the divine. In my busy, daily existence, sometimes I have to be knocked sideways by emotion, in order to notice life. I need that heart-opening, overwhelming, twisting in my gut in order to pay attention. Moments of grief and grace reverberate through my life, but especially during Holy Week. On Good Friday, as I contemplate the scandal of the cross, the death of meaning, the shared grief of fellow Christians twists open my clenched heart, and the grace of God flows in, readying me for resurrection.