A Light for My Path

When Rachel first died, I had an awful time sleeping. I had a hard time getting to sleep even when I was exhausted. I tended to toss and turn and sleep restlessly. I often had nightmares that jarred me awake, my heart pounding, and my lungs gasping for breath. My panic would wake my husband who often spent the rest of the night comforting me. He was getting very little sleep, as well, but he refused to sleep in the other room.

I rarely remembered specifics from my nightmares, just a general feeling of terror. But my brain immediately connected that fear to my daughter and told me “something bad” had happened to her.

After a while I had fewer bad dreams and my sleep would be full of memories of Rachel. We would be riding in my car with the top down singing at the top of our lungs. Eating cherries while we sat on her bed watching a movie. At some point in the dream I would realize she wasn’t in the car or the room anymore and I would wonder why. Then I’d wake up.

Whether I woke from a bad dream or just a confusing one, the result was the same. Every morning I awoke, realizing anew that my daughter was dead.

Of course, I hadn’t forgotten. That phone call. Her memorial service. The family gathering where we buried the urn containing her ashes under an oak tree in our yard facing the river. I’m well aware those things happened.

But for a long time, those occurrences and many others:

• the sight of her wedding rings on a chain around her husband’s neck
• the empty chair at the table during holidays and family gatherings
• the Christmas stockings I couldn’t bear to hang because it meant one would be empty …

reminded me day after day that Rachel was gone. Not off to college. Not to a new city for a job. Not to the house she and her husband would make a home. Gone from this world. Forever.

If you are a newly bereaved parent and are wondering how you can keep getting up every morning without your child here on the Earth, I’m not going to give you platitudes. It’s hard. You will grieve your child until you join him or her in Heaven. But you will make it. With God’s help.

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It is generally agreed upon that Jeremiah wrote the Book of Lamentations. Jeremiah was grieving over the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the subsequent exile of the Jewish people. He knew these actions were a result of the sins of Judah and that they had ignored warnings from God that bad things were going to happen if they didn’t straighten up.

Jeremiah mourned for the people and pled to God on their behalf that He would restore their stature as His chosen people if they would repent. They did. And He did. But it took a long time. Most of the exiles wouldn’t live long enough to see the restoration. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  But it took a lot of faith to wake up every morning in a foreign land as an indentured servant and believe they would see the promised land again.

Let me tell you about a Bible verse that I misinterpreted for a long time.

Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”

I took this verse to be something Jeremiah was saying to the people. As kind of a sermon, reminding them that God still loved them; He never stops granting mercy to hurting hearts that call on Him. He has new mercy available every morning.

All that is correct. It’s the last part I got wrong. I thought Jeremiah was still talking to the people, to the congregation, when he said, “great is Your faithfulness.” My English major brain couldn’t put up with a change in voice and audience in the same sentence. And I guess I glossed over that capitalized Your.

Jeremiah wasn’t commending the people for their faithfulness. That last part is Jeremiah talking to God. He’s wrapping up his sermon with an acknowledgement to God:

• Great is YOUR faithfulness

And the people of God say, “AMEN.”

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Every morning even if you are waist-deep in grief, God’s love and mercy are here for you. God’s mercies never end and they don’t grow stale. They are new every morning. Not because we are faithful. But because He is.

Every single morning.

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Laura