Why?

I attended my first Grief Share meeting last Thursday night. I had hoped to join one of the groups in process at my church, but two of them were inconvenient for me, and the third seemed to be led by a somewhat flakey and not obviously (to me anyway) compassionate individual whom I spoke with by phone. Part of my grief experience is that I feel more vulnerable than usual, and I didn't feel like that group leader was someone I could trust after my, albeit brief, interaction with her. Her busyness made me feel insignificant. Oh, well. I found another group at a little church in my neighborhood instead. The group leader seems to be a man of integrity and compassion. There were just a few other people at the meeting last Thursday night, and none of them has a loss like mine, but I felt welcome and I will continue to go.

Grief Share is a thirteen week program from a Christian perspective. Some of the well-known individuals involved in creating the Grief Share program are Anne Graham Lotz, Dr. Jack Hayford, Barbara Johnson, Ravi Zacharias, and Zig Ziglar. After watching a DVD about the week's topic, there's a discussion time, and I was given a workbook with daily readings and reflections for me to complete.

I joined the group as they were starting the sixth session and the topic was Why?. I have to admit that that hasn't been a big question for me, although I can totally understand why it would be for most people experiencing a loss - especially an unexpected one.

I guess, for me, I already understood that we're all going to die and none of us is guaranteed a long life. We all know that, but I think we sometimes exempt ourselves and our loved ones from that reality. I guess I could get nit picky with God about certain things, but even if I did there wouldn't be answers this side of Heaven that would be truly satisfactory - because whatever God's purposes might have been, surely there could have been another less painful way to accomplish them. Right? At least my limited ability to understand such things would suggest that. But God's ways are not my ways, and I'm okay with that. I've had some really good teaching in the last couple of years about His nature, and so I do understand that He is good all the time. Whatever has happened will be worked together for good because that's what God does.

I guess I've already come to a place of acceptance about Michael's passing in that I'm not really questioning it. That's not to say that it feels the least bit comfortable to me because it really doesn't. The void in my life since Michael's passing is huge. My dreams seem to be unattainable without him here. I miss him terribly. You have no idea. But I've been articulating my battered hopes and dreams to the Lord in prayer. I've brought Him a big list of what I'd like to be blessed with in the future. I've even added more requests to the list than I had before Michael got sick. Really big, outrageous requests for blessings in my life that you'd probably think I was crazy to expect would ever happen. I'll share them at some point, but not today. Right now, those desires are just between me and Him, and I know I can trust Him with my heart and my dreams because:

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see

the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:13

A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.

Psalm 34:19

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God,

to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Romans 8:28