I am in Birmingham tonight with 'the kids'...Lexi, Shelley and Ben, having driven down this morning. This drive was unlike any other I've made here. I drove through several areas on the way here that were just destroyed, devastated, eliminated by the tornadoes of two days ago.
As I drove I was first struck, as we all are, by the physical destruction to homes, offices, factories and trees. For many miles I drove through areas that were obviously still without electricity and probably would be for quite some time. Then, it hit me.....the true devastation was not the physical things that were gone. These were but symptoms of families in grief. There were people in mourning, trying to come to grips with loved ones being gone and with whom they had not even had the chance to say goodbye. In some cases, they were literally ripped from them.
How difficult was my parting with Bonnie? How much more so theirs. While we did not know our parting was coming, we at least had the time to fight together, to talk together. We had the chance to tell one another that we loved one another, which we did more in the last two weeks of October 2010 than in any other period of our lives. How tragic that the victims of these tornadoes did not have that opportunity.
Tomorrow marks six months since Bonnie died. Tonight as I opened this web page, her picture stared at me. It captured me. Her eyes would not let me go. I stared back at her picture for many minutes before I began to type. Could it have been only six months? Could it have actually been that long? As I have said before, time becomes elastic in grief. Her picture reminded me that it has been 1/2 year since we were together. Only that long? It seems like ages. On the other hand, it still seems like yesterday.......
I wrote the above on the sixth month anniversary of Bonnie's passing...April 30, 2011. I did not post it. I have yet to understand why. I guess it just wasn't finished.....
When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death with loved ones, we come away very different....at least I have. A few years ago if I'd driven through storm-ravaged neighborhoods, I might not have even thought about the families in mourning. I would have seen the things I saw and yet not felt what I felt.
This time I realized there will be babies growing up without fathers or mothers or the sister or brother they won't know. There are husbands walking to funerals alone....or wives, now by themselves....fathers or mothers trying to figure out how to raise children on their own while grieving for their own loss, or fathers and mothers grieving over the loss of a son or daughter. The pain of human loss was what struck me last week.
When we've walked that walk, when we've been through that valley, we feel for others who are in it now. It hurts us more than it once did.
Perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps that is the humbling aspect of grief....you realize you cannot get through this on your own and you pray for others in the same situation. You pray that they have the faith and the knowledge that their loved ones knew Jesus. You pray that their grief knows the boundary of heaven....that they know their loved one is in the arms of Jesus now and will be there throughout eternity. No pain, no sorrow...just the glory of God surrounding them.
That is how I've gotten through these past six months. That is what I pray for those whose lives were shattered last week.....that their grief knows the boundary of Heaven.
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