The Walls That Grief Built

It’s confession time, and this confession may cost me. But I have always tried to be transparent in this blog, and I want that to continue.

For the last eight to twelve months I have struggled to feel God’s presence and hear His voice. And that has been scary for me. What has frightened me so much was that I had no idea why.

In the past I have gone through periods of spiritual silence, but in each case I knew the cause. There was an issue I needed to confront in my life…a sin I needed to address…a call from God that I was ignoring. And I knew what I needed to do to end the silence.

For the last year I struggled more and more to hear God’s voice and feel His hand, even as I felt them slip away. And I did not know the reason.

What I did not realize was that the intimacy with my wife, Wanda, was also slipping away. We have always been close, sharing laughter and tears through whatever we faced. Through our 27 years of marriage I would have described our life together as  fun, adventurous and intimate. In recent months she has shared a feeling of increasing distance from me, but being the typical, thick-headed guy, I wrote off her concerns as “oversensitivity” or just a phase due to my busyness. But a few weeks she looked me in the eyes and told me that she felt alone. And that shook me.

So the next morning I sent the staff off on their respective assignments and cleared my schedule to spend some time alone with God and get to the bottom of both the spiritual silence and my wife’s feeling of isolation.

I hit my knees and prayed. And………nothing. I felt alone. I felt as if I was praying to a wall. No feeling of His presence. No correcting words. No epiphanies. Nothing.

After about 45 minutes of silence, I reached over and picked up my iPad, planning to read the Bible. But as I did, I felt the urge to read a new book I had just downloaded instead. The name of the book is The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken, and had been recommended to me by a friend from my childhood. So, I began to read.

This book tells the story of a man and his family who were missionaries in Somalia during the civil war. It is a challenging, heartbreaking and inspiring story, and it gripped me right away. And as I read the story of death, suffering, poverty, oppression and abuse they saw there, I found myself crying. I’m not talking about sniffles and slow tears flowing down my face. I am talking about can’t-breathe-snot-flowing-gut-wrenching sobbing.

But here’s the thing…I wasn’t crying about the suffering and death in Somalia in 1992. I was crying about the death and suffering that I have seen here in Guatemala. It was as if four-and-a-half years of grief came out of my body in an explosive release. And then I felt God hand on my shoulder once again. And I heard His voice for the first time in a while.

Daryl, you have been shoving down grief so long that you have gone numb. Why don’t you bring that grief to me instead? Let’s face it together.

So, I did. I sat and began going through the ones I had lost over the last four years. And it hurt…badly.

Gabby, who died of an allergic reaction to new seizure medication. (I was the one who spotted her petit mal seizures and encouraged the Director of her group home to take her to the neurologist for the same medicine that killed her.)

 

Pilar, an elderly woman who died from an obstructed bowel after we told the family that we could not pay for her surgery.

 

 

My mom, who died from injuries received in a car accident. A few days ago we passed the third anniversary of her death. This one really hurt when I confronted my grief.

 

Maria Jose, a precious little girl from Sipacate with cerebral palsy who was taken one night due to complications from a respiratory infection.

 

 

Our three year old neighbor, Jose, who stepped in front of a chicken bus and died from head injuries he sustained.

 

Our little Esperanza, who taught us more about God’s love than any sermon ever could. She filled our home and hearts with that love.

 

 

Our little Thania, who died in my arms in spite of my frantic attempts to save her with CPR. I watched the light go out in her eyes and was helpless to stop it.

 

Our little Micah, who came to our home and died eight days later. He suffered greatly during his short life, but it was still hard to see him go.

 

Brandon, who died last month when he and his mother were hit by a car as she carried him to the physical therapy our ministry provided.

 

 

Lucia, for whose life we have been fighting. She is currently in her home with her mom, expected to pass away soon.

 

 

And I could go on, but I won’t. This lists does not include all the deaths of precious children we have known, and it does not include the suffering we see every day.

I have attended so many funerals. I have consoled so many grieving parents. I have helped dig graves and I have helped fill them with dirt once the casket has been lowered. So much pain. So much loss.

Each time we lost another one, I would cry and grieve for a brief period. But I would tell myself that there is work to be done (true) so I needed to get over it and move on (false). I would shove the pain down deep and get back to work.

If this had happened once or twice, I could have likely moved on without noticeable consequences. But the grief piled up, one after another. And I believe my shut-down came shortly after Thania died. The trauma of that day, the flash backs, the guilt of not being able to save her…it was the emotional straw that broke this camel’s back. So, I shut down and withdrew. It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t even realized I had done it until my sobbing break-down three weeks ago.

And so, over recent days I have grieved anew. And through this period I have learned how healing it is to really grieve. All my life I have heard that you need to take time to grieve after a loss. And I have always given an intellectual nod to the sentiment. But until I faced the consequences of not grieving, I never really understood why.

Each day I feel more of God’s presence and hear His voice more clearly again. Wanda and I are laughing together and taking more time to just talk and love. I am more emotionally available to my family again. I can feel the walls coming down, and it feels good.

I am under no illusion that my grief has been dealt with and things are fine now. I know that there is still grieving to be done. And while I continue to grieve, there will likely be new reasons for grief that will arise. What I am learning is to face it and bask in the pain of loss while allowing Jesus to grieve with me. While grief unaddressed builds walls, grieving tears them down and enables us to find laughter on the other side. And it helps us stay connected to both God and those that we love.

I pray that in my weakness and my hard-learned lesson some of you will find help and healing for your own pain. Face it, feel it, allow the tears to flow, because the alternative is a life lived in numbness. And that’s not worth living.

Blessings from Guatemala!

Daryl