Grief + Loss

I know fear. I know earth-shattering, mind-spinning, gut-busting fear that comes in the blink of an eye, that overruns you with anxiety for everyone you know. I know what it means to have every single "worst nightmare" scenario race through your mind every time your husband leaves the house or your child is out of your sight. I know what it feels like to have life going along with everyone being "ok" and then the next moment, they are gone.  I know it well. 

Unfortunately, sudden death is a persistent friend of mine. I've met him time and again, and despite giving him the full breadth of my thoughts about him in no uncertain terms, he keeps showing up. Sorrow and suffering, it turns out, don't take direction from us. When they show up unannounced, all that seems permanent and concrete and never-failing can begin to shiver and quake and flip the world right on it's axis. 

Paul said it best when he said, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." (Phill 1:21)

And Paul knew. He had faced hurricanes, shipwrecks, stonings, beatings, torture unimaginable, prolonged imprisonment... He knew what it was to have much and to have nothing. He knew what it was to be imprisoned, abused, starved, lonely, grieving, and ON TOP OF ALL THAT- a stinking thorn be stuck that he could NOT get relief from- "a messenger of Satan, to torment me" (2 Cor 12:7). You know he had to had times when he was like... Dear Lord- HAVE MERCY.