James 4:14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
We made a right-hand turn into the now familiar driveway. White rock gravel crunched underneath our tires as white dust kicked up, coating the footboard of the car. Burton. Ester. O’Bannon. Sayre. Love. The names scrolled by as my head rested on the passenger window. The little pond just beyond the graves now full from the rain and snow we received over the past few months, the algae on the bottom no longer visible.
We pulled halfway into the grass and parked in our usual spot. Getting out of the car, it felt more like a late Spring day than early February. Mid-80s feels so hot in the winter. I stepped onto the dormant grass and walked around to the back of our car.
When did visiting a cemetery become familiar?
Our feet crunched over to her spot. A trash bag and microfiber cloth in hand, we settled down at our daughter’s grave. From experience, we’ve learned what to bring. What cleaning material is most helpful, what’s not.
Again, when did that become familiar?
My sweet bride bent down to take away the old spray of flowers, throwing it into the trash bag, then wiped down the marble from all its dirt. I stood there in the shade of Izzy’s tree (the one nearest to her), escaping the fierceness of the heat. Watching. Watching this sweet mama still take care of our girl. Looking at the name etched in stone, the familiar dates of her birth and now death.
Our hearts are heavy this day. We feel a wave of grief during our visit, especially with Izzy’s birthday approaching. The familiarity of this strange routine and place mixes into our grief, and I can’t help wondering about it all.
Our familiar used to be church activities, baseball practices, horse riding lessons, gymnastics, crying over math homework, cuddled up reading a good book, watching movies together. We’d talk to each other about dreams, plans, exciting events of the day, obedience to God’s Word. The more we lived out our days, the more we loved and treasured the gifts God gives.
Recently I read a commentary on the book of Lamentations which used the following from another book: “Learning is our soul’s requirement, and suffering our most persuasive teacher.”[1] Reading this gave a little shape to my uneasiness from this visit with Izzy.
You see, we all want good health and prosperous days. For some of us, we want things like advancing in our careers, a spouse and a house full of children, enough money in the bank, quiet and ease. It’s not wrong to enjoy the good gifts the Lord brings, if He brings them. James even tells us that, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change,” (James 1:17).
But when suffering comes, it disrupts that quiet and ease. Suffering disrupts the normal. We feel disruption even in the small things like taking care of your children becoming taking care of their gravesite. The route toward their grave replaces the once familiar route to their school or sports field. Seeing their friends and the ones they are close to swaps with passing by the names of the other headstones that are now the ones close to your kiddo.
And I think God intends to teach us something in both the good and bad, or the easy and hard providences. The undeserved gifts we receive from the Lord are meant to instruct us, but I agree with the author of the quote that suffering becomes our most persuasive teacher.
These strange new familiarities I’m experiencing – strange because I would not have planned it this way – teach me and open my eyes to the true reality I’m to live out. The true reality that I should not get too comfortable with this world. That I am not home. Yes, enjoy what good gifts and the toil the Lord has for me in the time I’m given them, but don’t assign greater value to them. Our lives are a vapor (James 4:14), we are not guaranteed tomorrow, nor are the people and circumstances around us.
I’m finding that all I can do at the end of the day, even in the strange new familiarities, even when my griefs seem overwhelming…all I can do is look to Jesus. As Hebrews 12:1-2 says,
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
We all would do well to remember in the easy and hard providences of our lives that we are not meant for this world. The things of this world are not permanent, so we should not fix our lives upon them – even the best of them. Instead, we lay them aside and look to our Jesus…
Till we are home…
[1] Lawhead, S. Byzantium (London: Harper Collins, 1997), p632. Quoted in: Webb, B. Five Festal Garments: Christian reflections on The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, USA, 2000), p59.
Never has a posting been so true to me in meaning !