The Dark Places

There is no emotional pain on earth greater than that of a parent who has lost a child.

There is no emotional pain on earth greater than the grief of a parent who has lost a child. As we read the news of so many deaths from the Texas floods, those of the children hit particularly hard. That so many of them were attending a Christian camp is particularly troubling to many: if this is how God rewards innocent children gathered to praise His name, what does Christian faith even mean?

There’s great deal of theology about evil and suffering, but it is of little comfort in a moment like this. It is, in fact, almost impossible to comfort a grieving parent with anything other than our presence.

The words most often used are almost always wrong and sometimes even wounding: They’re in a better place. God loved them so much he called them home. God never gives anyone a burden they’re not strong enough to carry. Everything happens for a reason. Stay strong! The pain will pass. You will heal. There’s another angel in heaven. I know how you feel. If you have lost a child, a concrete offer to accompany them, in time, may be appropriate.

There are paths through grief, and you may even have walked those paths or similar ones, but comparing your experience of grief to theirs is pointless. Each experience of grief is unique because each of us is unique. A person who is attempting to console a grieving parent is reaching for some memory of pain that can help them find empathy, and sometimes people get a little lost in the attempt. The worst thing we’ve ever felt may be the loss a parent, sibling, or friend, but we just need to keep in mind how fundamentally unnatural it is for a parent to outlive a child.

In the immediate aftermath of a shattering loss, much more beyond a few choice words is futile. I’m sorry. We love you. You are all in our prayers. Can we bring you a meal tomorrow night? Cry with them, because tears are more eloquent than words. Share a good memory, even a funny one, because memory is a kind of life, and laughter is light for those in the dark places. Pray with them and for them.

Saying nothing never seems like an option, but the absolute best thing we can bring to a grieving person is a listening heart. Presence.

We all worry about speaking to a parent about the son or daughter they lost. I’m involved in bereavement ministry and I still worry, insanely, that I will just add to their pain by reminding them of the one they love, as though they ever forget, or would ever want to. Every day they wake up and that hole is in their hearts. That hole will always be in their hearts.

I don’t say that the wound will never heal. It will. For some, healing will take different forms, but the wounded continue living. No one can bleed forever and survive. Humans are resilient and, eventually, they go on. Often, they break in destructive ways, and in so breaking receive new wounds. No one is unchanged. They may go back to work or to the daily routine, but there is no going back to what was. There is before and there is after—everything before is changed, and everything after has a different shade.

What remains is a scar they will carry for the rest of their lives and beyond this world, because that scar is a remnant of love, and it must remain, not as an open and bleeding wound, but as a mark on the soul. When Jesus displayed his resurrected body to the apostles, the scars of his wounds remained. He wasn’t still bleeding. But he also was not who he had been. He had changed.

The marks of the nails and the spear remained because they matter. The only thing in heaven made by human hands are the wounds of Christ. We are saved by those wounds, which makes them unique. And we are shaped by our own wounds, because they are ours. The scars they leave behind are a remnant of a love lost or a battle won.

We do not know what our souls will be like in heaven or what form our resurrected bodies will take, but I cannot believe we will be other than ourselves, only perfected. If someone lives 80 years on this earth, and 60 of them are lived in the shadow of tragedy, I believe those years matter to the person they will be in eternity. We can only be who we are: the sum of our sorrows and joys, trials and triumphs, pain and renewal. Suffering can’t be erased, but it can be sanctified.

If the promise of Easter Sunday is anything, it is this: death may mark us, and it will certainly have its moment at the end of each life. But it does not have the final word. It does not win.

God, too, is a grieving parent, and He grieves eternally. If the moment of the crucifixion spans time and matter, as we believe it does because Jesus is true God and true man, then the Father’s sorrow does as well. The Father is eternally watching his only Son tortured to death, and although He knows that everlasting life waits on the other side of suffering, that landscape of pain and darkness still must be traversed. We don’t get to the sunlight until we’ve passed through the shadows.

The parents in Texas are experiencing so many things that they feel their hearts and minds may explode. They are alternately frenzied and numb. They relive every choice they made or could have made. Each morning feels unreal, and there’s a moment upon waking when they imagine maybe it didn’t all happen. They’re having panic attacks. They are angry–so very angry. Sadness doesn’t even begin to capture it—it’s such an insufficient word. You’re sad when you break your favorite coffee mug. A loss like this might as well be the end of the universe. Our words fail, which is why we fail when we try to comfort using words.

The question Why? is never far from their minds. They are angry with God, and they should be, and they should tell Him so. It’s not like He doesn’t already know.

I don’t even know any of these families and I’m angry with God about it all. I’m certain of this much: when I stand before Him to be judged, I’m going to have some questions. And the first will be, Did it all have to be this hard?

I think the holes in his hands and feet and side–the wounds by which death was defeated–already provide the answer, but that doesn’t make it any easier. My faith remains because I trust that it will all make sense in the end. Sometimes I feel that better than at others. This week it’s a little harder. In moments like this, we have to trust that He understands something we do not.

I think of a painting done in pointillism, which looks like nothing when standing close to it–just little points of pigment, some light, some dark.

But when I stand back, I can see the entire image, and it is beautiful.

Each life is like a painting made of light and darkness. We’re too close to it, though. We can only see what we’re looking at in any given moment. We only see the parts.

God sees it all. And when we come face to face with Him, He will show us our painting, and we will see how the dark places fit together with the light. We will see, even as we are seen. And we will know. And it will all make sense. It will be terrible and it will be beautiful. But it will be ours.