Crying Days

I, personally, need a 250-count box if I'm going to reread this one....

Have you ever had one of those days when it felt you might cry at the drop of a hat? Today was that day for me.

I cried when we sang "How Great Thou Art". I cried when I prayed over one of my darling Sunday School students who was scared to get her flu shot after class. I cried again when I heard the song "Held", sung by Christian artist Natalie Grant.

I'm pretty sure you've sung the hymn and probably cried with a little one when they were frightened, but have you ever really listened to the song "Held"?

If you listen to Christian radio, you might have. But I, too, had heard it a thousand times and, somehow, just never focused in on the lyrics until this year.

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we'd be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We're asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it's unfair

[Chorus]
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We'd be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

[Chorus]

If hope if born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our savior

[Repeat Chorus 2x]

Just the unbridled anguish in the tone of the lyrics alone is enough to make me cry buckets. But, add the depth of beauty that Natalie Grant's voice brings to the song, along with the fact that it was written for a friend and her husband who had lost their infant child, and I am reduced to mush.

I have family and friends and acquantances who have all lost children much too early.

Some arrived on Earth so we could all say "hi" and "goodbye" in the blink of an eye. There are days, even years later, when it still seems like it wasn't possible for such a nightmare to occur. That we should be talking in present instead of past tense.

Some babies never made it past a few weeks or months in the womb. The shock of conceiving life, the high, was extinguished before its time. Those angels are grieved as if they had been walking beside us their entire lives.

Some children were just a prayer in a friend's mind. A "someday" when that precious baby of her dreams would be conceived. But the dream never materialized and that sweet Momma to be is left wondering "Why NOT me?" While not the death of a baby, it is the death of the hope of a baby.

And, when I put my little bit of suffering up against theirs? I just wish someone would punch me in the face and bring me back to reality.

Last Friday was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Those grieving their loss lit a candle from 7-8pm in remembrance of their precious children who are now being rocked in Heaven and sung to by angels.

Personally, I think we shouldn't set aside days and times for grieving. I think we should express grief like those in other cultures, with wailing and moaning and carrying on.

But, we Americans think that is "uncouth" and "ridiculous". We like to relegate our grief to a couple of well-put-together services and a few weeks or months and then forget about the situation all together.

I stand with all those who have lost children to tell you that WE CAN'T FORGET. WE WON'T FORGET. On our death beds, we'll be telling you how much we love you and mentioning names of those we loved who went before us. And begging you not to forget them.

Somehow, we have to realize that grief is normal. It isn't symptomatic of a problem. It is the working of a solution. And, believe it or not, it is HEALTHY. And NORMAL. And GOOD.

God is just sitting on my fingers, guiding them, making sure I get His point across right now. "You aren't alone." He says. "Don't ever fear. Turn to me." "There's nothing too big."

And to that, I have to respond:
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art!