"I am your creator. You were in my care before you were born." - Isaiah 44:2
Have you ever noticed that the touch of another human being is the most welcome thing in the world, except for when you're in pain? Be it a cut, a scrape, a burn or even a pimple; when it comes to the body wounded, we are much more likely to recoil from the touch of someone else. It's as if the mind defaults to a defense mechanism that tells us to minister to our own wounds as the means to an end, namely self-preservation. It's instinctive and very real. If you don't believe me, then remember this blog the next time you get a really deep splinter in your finger. Who will have better luck digging it out? You or someone else? Or, more importantly, which way will hurt the least?
I am discovering that grief, for me anyway, is no different. I will tend to myself, thank you. I will immerse myself in the gray fog and pray for survival, each and every day, because - and I'm being so brutally honest with you right now - it actually hurts much less than when others try to step in and help me, or advise me, or talk to me, or empathize. This is my second journey through the valley of death over someone I have loved very deeply. First was my father, now my mother.
I had a class in Thanatology my senior year of high school. Can you believe that? Whatever possessed me to take such a class, I'll never know. I also fell in love in that class, with a girl who never loved me back. Keep following along. I'm getting somewhere with this, I promise. Anyway. Back to death...and grief and mourning. I know how it works. It's all very natural, a long process of five steps repeated over and over, until the heart no longer hurts and the mind no longer acutely questions. We each do it differently. Some seek counsel with close friends or family, some end up needing individual therapy, others group therapy. Some will lean on their priests or pastors, others will go straight to God.
This last group, the one's that flee to God? I think they've got it right. They're fleeing to love in the face of the loss of it. Does that make sense? I hope so. That eighteen year old me tried to get that part right in that class. I mean, I was not actively mourning anyone at the time, but amidst all that dark, depressing study of death I think I had to fall in love with someone just to survive! My fault was in seeking love from another human being, instead of God. Because whether you're just studying the loss of death, or actually experiencing it? There's only one pair of hands that can truly knit your wounds.
They are, by no strange coincidence, the same hands that knit you together in the first place.
