Too Many Tears

I lay awake not believing that I could ever have so many tears. When it seems I have cried all that I could possibly cry, another flow and another, and yet another. My eyes are blinded by tears and my ears are deafened by by my own cries.

I lay awake, my memory pulling me back to the night I saw my husband laying in the ground, lifeless. There on the ground his body lay, light of my world by darkness slay.

I prayed to God that night. I prayed that my God would raise him from the dead. Believing in such miracle was so much more tangible than to accept that I would have to face living without him. 

But as lay on top of his lifeless body calling him back to me, it was the voice of God that whispered into my soul: He is not coming back.

Ever since then, there hasn't been a single day, a single hour when I did not wished he was here. Too many times I wanted him back more than I wanted to live. Times that I wanted Jason more than I wanted Jesus. 

I was loved by a kind, generous, compassionate and committed man. He loved me with a passion that left no room for doubts. I wish I could have had his love, his presence for a little while longer. But I know what love tastes like and that not even death can take from me. 

I think of my children and all the father's days the will feel the sting of not having their Daddy to hug and to hear them expressing how much they love him. I wipe their tears and tell them, as I often tell myself, that we will never get over it but we will learn to carry it. But I know they feel, as I do, crushed under the heavy weight of his absence.

There have been many times in this journey of grief that I struggled to trust God, to trust others, to trust myself. Too many times when I felt utterly alone, scared and destitute. Times when no matter what people said or or what people did, not matter how many bible verses I read or how many feeble prayers I prayed, the reality that my husband is gone has been like a daily slap on my face leaving me disoriented and bereft.

But that which seemed to come to destroy me, to rob me, to chain me, has also become the very thing that is pushing me towards the One who loves me more Jason ever could. 

And in my darkest moments I have felt the presence of the only One who truly understands my suffering, and who will never judge me, never condemn me, never leave or abandoned me. 

As I lay awake and alone in my bed, I am once again reminded of the love of Christ for me. His love that is fiercer and more powerful than the love of any human being. His love that comes to me even in my doubts and in fears. His love that never changes and is unconditional. 

It's hard to see anything when one's eyes are full of tears. It's hard to hear anything when one's ears are blocked by their own cries. It's hard to hope when one's heart is shattered.

But my God to whom I prayed to raise my husband from the dead, He rose Christ Jesus from the dead. Christ, whom in my anguish and fear I couldn't hear, He who "there in the ground His body lay, light of the world by darkness slay". He knows my pain, He understands and He carries me, because in my weakness He is strong.

I am a widow. 

I am fatherless. 

I am a foreign. 

I am broken poor.

I am broken-hearted. 

But my God has promised to be the defender of widows, the father to the fatherless, the embracer of foreigners, the provider for the poor, the healer of the broken-hearted.

He shows himself to me through my blinding tears and deafening cries. And He is helping me to re-remember that "In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song". And that in Him there is life after death, even now, even for me and my children.