Season of Sorrows

How has sorrow changed you? Has it affected you r relationship with the Lord? Stiffened your resolve to serve him? Sapped your strength? Or has the effect of sorrow become a tangled mess? Perhaps it is a tangle that you have grown tired of, and now you try to live as you did before the sorrow. I am turning back to this tangle again. I have no expectation of sorting it all out, but I do wish to consider what changes have taken root and grown up in my life. Perhaps some have borne good fruit.

March and April are months sorrow for my families and me. Today marks 12 years since my first wife died in a maternity ward. The first of April was the first anniversary of my father-in-law’s death – also premature. March 19^th was three years since my 3-month-old son preceded me in death. And this past weekend was the memorial service for my grandmother-in-law through my first wife. I traveled down to Salem to learn more of this woman, and hearing the memories shared by her children and grandchildren was a blessing. What struck me deepest, though, was the slideshow of pictures from her life. In the pictures of her as a young woman, I saw that she could have been a twin to my first wife. Her smile, the twinkle in her eye, and the shape of her face could have belonged to Nancy. During the rest of the slideshow my breath caught with glimpses of how these last twelve years might have changed Nancy. I hadn’t expect to be swept away by my own memories—memories of “what if” and “might have been.” These almost-memories haunt me now for the passions and fervor with which I came before our Lord following Nancy’s death.

So many things –seemingly-important now– meant nothing to me then. I burned with a desire to be the biggest thorn in the enemy’s side that I could be. He had plotted to overthrow the righteous order of the world, and that pervasive corruption stole my true love from me. I wanted revenge. I didn’t want to be the big, flashy, news-worthy kind of thorn. I wanted to be the “How could that have happened?!” kind of thorn. I wanted him to wish (after many, many years) that death had not claimed my wife so many years before. I wanted to be able to point to her death as the turning point. I nursed thoughts of that revenge.

Yet time droned on, and I could not keep that fire stoked. Now stupidity and ignorance (yes – even my own) irritate me far more than is useful, and I only complain about them. Small things enrage me at times. I have conceded that even stupidity and ignorance are foes to great for me. Never mind about real enemies. They are too clever to be identified. I am not the thorn that I longed to be. Yes. How easy despair comes to us.

It is easy to believe that the fires of anger are a sign change or even the only sign of change. But that simply isn’t true. Changes that endure are the changes that often occur imperceptibly. Their import may not be recognized unless you go looking for them. These changes are the changes that I am looking for.

What has changed for you? How long has it been since sorrow moved in? What furniture did sorrow rearrange? Did anything get thrown out? I will share the changes that I can observe in my life, but I would like to learn yours too.

Login to add comments