July 10, 2019

Heavy Backpacks

Michele is one who can paint with words a dramatic, passionate picture of what it is like to hike the ascending trails of the California mountains.  She became a hiker, not out of a love for the great outdoors and not out of a desire to conquer one of nature’s challenges, but she chose hiking as a way to spend quality time with her husband, who was an avid lover of hiking, and those rugged ascents became times to connect, growing understanding and appreciation of each other.  She also came to learn there’s a checklist to use in preparing a backpack that will hold all the necessities for being on the trail, thinking in terms of known necessities as well as being prepared for any surprises on the way.  Outside of the things you will really need, everything else is left behind. This will help make your ascent to the top easier, and it will keep you from being hindered in the forward journey you are wanting to make.

Sharing her picture of mountain climbing with the moms sitting in front of her, she compared the physical mountain hike with the emotional and spiritual journey we embark on when our child’s life is cut short, and we too must walk forward, bent and broken with our loss, desperate to find answers for our tomorrows and for the intensity of pain and exhaustion that is ours.  The moms in front of Michele understood.  In our grief, we too each carry a backpack, and everything in our backpacks makes it heavier.  The greatest heaviness is the weight of our child’s absence from our lives – a weight that bears down on us emotionally, physically, relationally, cognitively, and even spiritually.  Our lives and our personal perspective can be totally changed.  Although not always readily understood, grief is godly in the love we have given and still give, and in its potential to bring us in utter dependence to God.  

Some things in our backpack of grief involve choices we may go to, but some of those choices do not move us forward in healthy, godly ways.  Things like isolation, self-medicating, choosing anger over forgiveness, holding on to regrets.  In other things, we have little or no choice.   They are simply facts that illustrate the reality of loss, facts that are often normal with loss, or facts that sometimes complicate our loss – even though God doesn't want us to be consumed by them or stuck in our journeys because of them. 

But, whatever the heaviness, God longs for us to give Him the heaviness, place it in His hands, and allow Him to lighten the burden through His grace, love, and hope.  In Psalm 121, the psalmist looked up, acknowledged his help comes from God, and chose to count on God’s help.  We can do the same.  And in the reality of our journey of grief, we may well find ourselves going to our God over and over and over, each time choosing Him and His help, realizing I cannot do this journey alone, but God can help me, and I want to give Him the heaviness, over and over and over, so I can know He holds my hand – He even carries me – and lightens my backpack as WE walk forward together.
                                                                                – Bev, and Michele too :)

(Related Bible reading: Psalm 121:1,2)