Stones in the City Walls, Pulled from the Riverbed

“Silently tracing the cracks through the chaos. Grieving what cannot come back, what’s gone away.

Feeling the weight of the sorrow’s night, you can’t find your way through the black, so you pray for light.

Everyone’s trying to find ways to fix it, you know in your heart what you need to work it out.

Looking away to the violent sky, there’s a deep, dark river rising on the inside.

And you stand in the water with your arms crossed, groaning hallelujah.

And the trees bow to the east as the sun waits under the sea.

Fall into that mystery or it will pull you under,

It’s okay, say goodbye.” 

Stones from the Riverbed by Matthew Perryman Jones

I think at every moment of life we are simultaneously grieving and rejoicing. It’s part of living in a world where sin still takes up residence. A time and portion of your life passes, and there is grief over what was and will be no more. People move in and out of relationship, and there is pain in the process. Yet, each passing brings forward a bright horizon of possibilities and joys all its own. And each time it happens I’m left in ambivalent awe.

I remember talking with a friend a few months ago about what she could be doing better to protect herself and those she was in relationship with from getting hurt, from the pain of a ruptured relationship. I’ve been letting that sit in my heart for a while, processing it as I grieve relational pains of my own. And this is what I’ve come to:

We cannot truly protect ourselves from pain. It can and will come, often unexpectedly, and often despite all of our efforts to keep it at bay. But, maybe that is okay. Maybe pain isn’t the real enemy. Pain is so often the method through which we learn the most about ourselves and about God, and about the world he has put us in. It is a result of a broken system in which we live, and although it should never be delighted in itself, leaning into the pain and grief of life is often the only way we can find healing.

When we try to avoid pain, what we end up with is inauthentic, shallow, or self-centered relationship. Because in protecting ourselves, we hold back who we truly are and wall ourselves off from being deeply and wholly known. Ironically, knowing others, and being known by them, is what we were made to do. We cannot fully love without giving ourselves. And we cannot give ourselves without the risk and almost assured reality of pain.

I want to love fully. I want to know and be deeply known by another, and by a community of those who walk with God.

And I think I’m just beginning to learn my need to embrace both the grief and the joy that come with that depth of love.