Trusting My Tears

And a prayer from Ash and Starlight

The words below are adapted from some of my comments at the memorial for my brother-in-law over the weekend.

My family and I spent some time in the canyons and valleys in Utah last week. We went to some national parks and state parks, and we drove through mountain landscapes and valleys.

Seeing these vast and dramatic landscapes is a good way to feel small. I was reminded of a prayer by my friend Arianne Braithwaite Lehn: When I cry for the world.

“I cry and I pray,
trusting my tears mingle with [God’s] own,
hoping the tearful river softens and shapes
the hardest canyons of injustice…”

We have cried so much since Joshua died.
And we will cry more.

His loss just leaves me speechless and probably always will.
He leaves a big gaping chasm in our lives that can never be filled.

The imagery from Lehn’s prayer reminds me that some holes and canyons are created by water. Some landscapes that we see today on our drive through the countryside are the result of ground being heaved and torn apart. We see big gaping holes along the landscape: gashes and tears in the hardest rock and foundation of the ground.

Not all holes will be filled.

Today, we do not pretend the chasm isn’t there, or try to fill it. Some holes can never be filled – and were never intended to be. Some of them we even look at and marvel at the layers, the lines that are exposed, how the land has been shaped by rushing water over millennia.

The metaphor breaks down for me at some point. But I’m sitting with the imagery and questions: will we live at the bottom of the canyon? Stay at the top looking down? Or pass through the narrows, wondering what’s around the next turn?

Maybe we see the marks along the walls of the canyon, see the places of the tears.
We see that we are not the only ones with big gaping holes in our lives. We recognize the new landscape now – that this is how we are marked now.

We don’t rush through just to be done with it.
Our job is not to pretend the gaping hole isn’t there – or rush to fill it.

But instead to be loved right now.
To see just how much we are all – each one of us – loved so much, more than we can ever fully take in or imagine.
And that’s the truth.

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” - Romans 8:38-39

Thank you for reading Almost Named Grace. Writers really value readers who share their work by forwarding, sharing on an online platform, and yes, by word of mouth. I wouldn’t be here without you, so thank you!

I love hearing from readers… replies to this email will be sent directly to me. Keep in touch!

---

~What I’m reading~

The Science of Scaling by Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

Thank you for reading Almost Named Grace! Subscribe for free to receive new posts right in your inbox. Paid subscribers also receive weekly sermon notes whenever I preach.