I sat last night, at our Longest Night Service, in reflection. I looked at the empty chair on the stage, the chair that holds everything I’ve lost. And I saw both of my parents looking at me. I felt like I could see a new depth of their sorrow. I felt like I was looking at a mirror, and I realized that their suffering has become my own. I’ve been burdened by such similar griefs. A terribly dysfunctional father relationship, the chains of self hatred, bitterness, broken family relationships, and the fear of being unlovable, to name a few.
You see, in separate ways and in separate seasons of life, I’ve lost both of my parents. Our relationships are broken. There are no words to fully encapsulate the pain of this loss. To know that they both still live life, but separate from me. To recall the sweetest memories, specifically of Christmas time, and know that they were finite. Every year my dad would take me Christmas shopping and we bought gifts for all my family. How deep the joy I felt every year we carried out that tradition. How my mom would work endlessly to make Christmas the most extravagantly, special time. And that my childhood would only be marked by a joyful Christmas time. Family around the table, the anticipation of Christmas morning, laughter, and love. Though the normal seasons would carry their weight, Christmas felt like an exhale. When I remember how good and how loving they were to me, grief is so potent. I hold both joy and sadness at the exact same time. I don’t even know how it’s possible, but it is.
The joy I’ve experienced in my past is what makes my grief so, BIG. And yet, because of the depths of my grief, I truly know joy. I can’t have one without the other.
We sang a song last night too. I sat and listened and cried. And some of the words stuck out to me as tears fell. Jesus weeps with us. It struck me that God makes space for joy and grief. He is with us, in every moment. He is with us in our joy. He delights in us. And He is with us in our grief and anguish. I felt Him there with me. I pictured him sitting beside me, weeping too. His heart breaking for me, and His heart delighting in me.
We are not alone, ever. There is nothing that can stop God from being Emmanuel: God with us.
Honestly, I am not sure how to feel about all this layered sadness. As I hold my own grief, and make space for compassion for my parents, I simply just trust that though I can’t be there to sit with them, or to fix everything, or to make it all ok, He is there. And He is moving in ways I’ve yet to see.
I see Him next to each and every one of my family members and His presence feels like an exhale and a tangible sense of peace rises in me.
“He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.”
Isaiah 53: 3-4 NLT
Lillie Doell
