Lost in Yalta

I'll begin at the end.  It was eventful.  I must forego the whole story and just say that we are back, all of us, safe and sound from a one day excursion to Yalta on the Black Sea.  We had Liza for 48 hours over my Mom's birthday weekend.  It felt good.  We saw the sun actually shining for the first time in 28 days.  The sky was blue.  Do you know how much that enhances your ability to cope?  It would not have been worth more to me had it been literally made of gold and handed to me.  It was tonic for the soul.  I don't know how long I stood, face uplifted, afraid to close my eyes and soaked in the sound of every wave, the beauty of every ray, my children laughing.  I breathed.  I was silent.  And I breathed.

Many sweet, kind people have tried to use logic to help us overcome spiritual oppression and emotional pain here.  I have been very convicted to pay attention to how we respond to someone who is hurting.  We are uncomfortable with sadness or anger, so we try to talk each other out of feeling those things.  I just want to point out that Satan does not release his grip on us because it ought to make sense.  Many things in this world should be and are not; or should not be and are.

If you were betrayed by a friend and someone said, "At least you had a friend" would you be comforted?  If you were sitting beside your mother's bedside while she dies and someone said, "At least you had her as long as you did" would you cease to mourn?  If your marriage ended and someone said, "At least you got out alive" would you not grieve the loss? If you spent every day for a month with social orphans whose parents live and yet do not come for them, in a spiritually oppressed nation and someone said, "At least you saved one" would you forget the rest?  I will never forget.  And if it ever stops hurting, then shame on me...because my eyes have been opened.  And it hurts.  Yet we are worn thin.  We are worn thin and that hurts, too.

 It's okay for Christians to hurt.  It is not a lack of faith or a failure. We should not approach others with a measuring stick and tell them when it's okay for them to hurt and when rationally they should stop hurting for our comfort.  My sister described a book written by her friend, Daniel Walser, in to Make a Life,  that describes it as sitting in a burning house.  This is a quote from her blog about this idea:

He articulates with precision the rarely heard perspective of a man grieving the loss of his unborn child.  “I begged God to raise her from the dead.  Crazy?  I didn’t think so.  I pleaded with the Almighty.  My heart nearly dislodged with the force of yearning behind each appeal.  I became a desperate, dime-store lawyer stating my case before what I hoped would be a fair and righteous judge.”  

But for me personally, the real treasure in his writing is less the narrative of what happened and much more the insider story of grief that follows. How we who stand outside often unintentionally fail those inside the “burning house,” how God does not, how we can help by being willing to enter into the flames rather than trying to simply extinguish them.

This story is for all of us: those who have hoped and been disappointed, those who mourn, and those who want to understand how to enter the mourning of others."

We will rejoice when we get our daughter home.  This place will become part of her past.  We cannot, however, erase that past.  It will still hurt her.  She will need us to enter the burning house, sit down in the midst of it, and burn with her then, as we are now.  It is a life skill for parents.  

I'll leave you with that image and show your some brighter ones.  They are the balm.

These are all elderly people dancing in the public square.  Joy you just don't see in Ukraine.

We had to return her by 1pm for a school field trip to the Circus.  Last night we heard there was a snow storm in the mountain passes we had traveled down.  That route was only 100km.  The alternate route was supposed to take 4 hours, so we had to wake up and leave straightaway.  She didn't talk or smile the whole drive drive back.  Then toward end she said, "Mommy?...One more week?"  Yes, baby, just one.  Then I had to give her back.  I pray that was the truth.