Death, Where Is Your Sting?

it's right here

Warning: this will not be what you’d expect in a typical just a few days before Christmas newsletter.

I’ve wanted to send out an update for weeks. The ebb and flow between having no words and way too many made it impossible. If I’m going to be totally transparent, the ebb and flow has been more like rip currents some days. Lots of days.

Mom died.

Death sucks, which makes the word died just as sucky.

I could have said she passed away, or passed on. That softens it a little bit, right?

Maybe I could have made it sound a bit more clinical and emotionally detached by using a word like deceased. Word nerd alert: we get deceased from the Latin for “departure” which is also a variation of “to go away.”

She’s departed. Gone away to a better place. One might say the better place, because it’s where anguish and pain and suffering are nowhere to be found.

With Jesus, she has transcended to the other side of eternity.

Transcended is definitely prettier.

I’m trying to embrace the both/and of all of it. The suck and the beauty. I’m quite literally embodying the suck and beauty of it as I type these words from Mom’s house, sitting in the dining room chair she spent so much of her last year of life in, looking out at the lake that brought her so much peace and joy and beauty throughout her nearly thirty years of living here.

This house, one of so many rewards offered to her in this life through hard-earned freedom. The courage it took to step out into all the uncertainty that came from fleeing my dad’s abusive reign.

“Everything will go poorly for you without me.” Famous final words translated from the original Spanish he threatened us with, prophetically announcing the exact opposite of what actually happened when we left.

She was one of the most underestimated forces of nature you’d ever meet. Nearly paralyzing and pervasive insecurity plagued her for a lifetime, the decades with dad taking their harshest toll. She was also awkward and corny as hell, in case anyone’s ever wondered where my awkward cheesy streak comes from.

Mom was a warrior, armed with something bigger than anything this world could ever offer. The One who made the world and everything in it was her strength, and it’s a legacy of faith she fought victoriously to protect and pass on to her children and grandchildren.

A small taste of the ebb and flow rip currents of words, unleashed by sitting in a dining room chair.

I’ve been repeating the same section of Scripture over and over again:

Where, O death, is your sting?

1 Corinthians 15:55

And my response over and over again is the same, hand on heart:

It’s right here, Paul. It’s right freaking here.

Until next time,

Becky

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a few more words…

Whether the sting of loss is fresh for you this season or not, here are some words from others that have been a balm for this grieving heart. I pray they are for you, too:

The world, and even those closest to a grieving person, want to mend the pain of loss. They offer patches and prayers and hope for our return to something resembling normalcy sooner rather than later.

But deep grief work is slower than that. It is painstaking, like darning. It might mean more unraveling before we have the raw edges needed to start weaving together the remaining threads into something that—while not quite recovered—is being restored.

On Mending, Darning, and Grief by

Julie Hester

Let grace be the vessel that carries your grief and transforms it into gratitude when the time is right.

In the Gap of Gratitude & Grief by

Stephanie LaPreal Yttrup

I am well, and I am unwell.

I think what I’m longing for, and maybe what you need too, is permission to call something terrible what it is, instead of looking for the ways it has been redeemed. God does redeem. I know this and I’ve seen it. But we can’t “skip to the good part”.

Thankful and by

Annelise Roberts

Something extraordinary happens when our faith reaches out to touch the promises of God—we are embraced by them. They lay hold upon us and refuse to let us go. They bind us with covenantal cords and draw us on until we are close enough to hear them whisper to us, "yes and amen." Advent calls us to wait, with arms outstretched, until we are finally seized by the faithful God of promises.

Hurry Up and Wait by

Nojesuittricks

Grief is connected to hope.

Holding space for joy to show up means that while joy may not yet be present, by holding on to hope that joy will again be experienced, I am holding a space for Joy’s visit while not being invested on the outcome that she will show up.

Yes, it is through hope, I am able to create a space for Joy to show up.

Joy - and those who grieve by

Sally French Wessely

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