Good morning…
We email one another often as she processes her profound grief. Our back and forth exchanges are life-giving, exposing God’s healing edge. This week she shared a Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote from his Letters and Papers from Prison.
“Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love,” writes Bonhoeffer, “and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn’t fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.”
“These words are important to incorporate into our process of healing,” I emailed back. “The emptiness is never filled, the forever bond is unbroken, even at the cost of pain. How has this dynamic been evident for you?”
“When I am aware of the emptiness, tears come to my eyes immediately,” she wrote. “It is as if there is a vacancy in my heart that is longing. Two months ago, it was a more jagged abandoned place. The edges of it are softening over time. I am simply noticing it; there’s not an urgency to fill it with anything. This is a new way of being for me. Two or more decades ago, I would have unconsciously been seeking to fill it up. Now, it is okay to just let it be there. To be quiet in the sadness and notice my longing shift toward and rest in God. I have faith that with more time, the empty place will be a place of comfort for me in a significant way. Thank you for asking.”
“What an amazing description of the raw truth of deep grief 🌸,” I marveled at my friend’s ability to befriend her empty place. A few days later she shared a poem, continuing God’s restorative revelation.
*****
After a Year of Grieving by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Not that the sorrow became smaller.
Not that I stashed it away.
Not that I moved through it.
More like a spaciousness grew,
as if the lens of life had been zoomed in tight
and slowly, slowly it widened.
Or as if I’d been cupping my hands
around something precious
and finally I trusted I could open my hands
and that precious thing would not fly away—
or perhaps it would, and I would still be fine.
All I know is today, I feel it,
an inner vastness, a capaciousness,
an ability to breathe, to be opened,
as if my own back has turned
into a window. As if my heart
has become clear sky.
******
“Wow,” I was awed by the beauty. “This poem speaks of the same empty space, not being filled but expanding into an inner vastness, allowing us to become an open window to everything. How do these gorgeous words connect to your experience of this grieving year?”
“These words give me ‘hope and a future’ 💖,” she replied.
“Hope. A future,” said my final email. “God’s vast expanse stretches us out, as if the tight lens of our lives is slowly, slowly widening from within. We do not orchestrate this process of expansion. We just trust in God’s gentle transformation. The Author of peace will continue widening us, forever and ever. Amen. I love our daily bond, sweet friend.”
“Amen!” she echoed.
Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life (Romans 8:5a-6, MSG).
…Sue…
