There are some days when I really miss my O’ma – when grief
hits me like a wave out of nowhere, knocking wind out of my lungs for a few moments
before my brain tells them to inhale again. The girls crocheting in the hallway
at work, sometimes showing me their crooked borders, remind me of lessons in her
living room and my own crooked handiwork. I still can’t knit or crochet with
straight lines…but we can’t be good at everything.
I remember her reading to me when I was younger, my head
nestled in her lap – Little Women
still looks like a huge book. So many of her books line the shelves in our home
now, I couldn’t throw them away if I tried. I can still spend hours lost in
stories, slightly grieving the end of them at times. O’ma fostered a love of
story within me, maybe without even realizing it.
To be completely honest, I was angry at God when I watched
cancer consume O’ma’s physical body. Angry to see my feisty grandmother losing
such a fight in that stale hospital room, angry to see a Jesus who constantly
heals the sick in Scripture not miraculously rid her body of every distorted
cell. But I know now what I didn’t know then, I understand now what I didn’t
understand then: cancer wasn’t the period that ended O’ma’s
story.
The thing about story is that the characters don’t know the
end from the beginning like the author does. They can’t always see the peak
from their valley or the point in their suffering, but somehow in the end they
are not the same. I know now that it is an honor to be invited in to the beauty
and agony of someone’s story.
There is tremendous hope knowing that Jesus is “the Author
and Perfecter of my faith” – that in the darkest, loneliest chapters my story
is not finished. Sometimes, especially in valley seasons such as this one,
holding onto hope feels more like I’m white knuckling it with sweaty palms. Sometimes
I forget that the grace of God is the life within my story, that He bore my
curse and earned my blessing, that nothing is wasted, nothing is outside of His
redemption. I know now, more than I did before and less than I will in the
future, that moments of deep rejection, overwhelming grief, and paralyzing fear
are all eclipsed by the grace I’ve found in Christ’s exclamation “It is
finished.”
It is finished - a glorious invitation to release the burden of trying to write our own stories and dwell in grace.
-a
