We arrive at the final s in our loss acrostic -
S unshine in the Shadows
Our final Tolkien quote1 is from The Two Towers:
“[You] can only come to morning through the shadows.”
God is God, and I am not. Words of comfort, yes. They certainly can be. Honestly, I don’t always want to hear them. They’re words of comfort I get to (very reluctantly, at times) choose to submit to.2
The wilderness of ambiguous loss reveals my desperate search for comfort. What I’m dependent on is more than just pep talks and positive affirmations, though. I need daily manna, the bread of life.3
That means I need Jesus, and not just something that kinda sorta looks like him.
My idea of God isn’t God. It has to be shattered time after time, and he shatters it himself. God will knock down my house of cards4 as often as he needs to in order to let the Son -- S-O-N -- shine in the shadows of my loss.
I know this truth, and yet when hope and joy are hard to see and feel and believe, guilt and condemnation try to make their home in my uncertainty and doubt. This season of ambiguous loss with loved ones has me reaching the end of myself almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day.
This is what reveals my everyday need for God.
My loneliness and longing is an open wound. I cry out in lament and sit with the both/and of the presence and absence I’m experiencing.
Grief and gratitude, love and loss.
Ambiguous loss has kept me utterly dependent on God, and that’s not a bad thing. You can’t survive the wilderness without manna, friend. God is God, and we are not, and his certain Presence provides rest for our wrestling hearts.
In her book Companions in Suffering, which I’ve referenced a few times throughout our series, Wendy Alsup shares the following words5:
“He doesn’t always save my bank account or my health (or fill in the blank with the ambiguous loss you’re currently wrestling with) But he does save my soul.”
She goes on to share an important reminder for us a little further in the book, “Job had a turn in fortune toward good. We may not.” Our deepest longing shouldn’t primarily be for the restoration of relationships or situations, because that restoration we’ve envisioned might not come on this side of heaven. Our hope needs to be somewhere else, and not just in relationships being restored.
Ambiguity will find us, eventually. We can’t have certainty all the time.6 However, there is an assurance that has spoken to me in the midst of all that’s uncertain. When the presence and absence of ambiguous loss holds hands, there is a Presence that is never absent. It holds me steady, and reminds me I’m not an orphan.
God sometimes uses the utterly inexplicable to point us toward him. We get to decide whether we will lean in to what is unfolding and say yes, or back away.
The very struggles I would just as soon skip past become the ticket to gaining what I lack.
An ever present help in trouble7, not just on the other side of it.
Time for a callback to the Tolkien quote that started our loss series journey:
Frodo asks, “Where shall I find rest?” And Gandalf doesn’t answer. Tolkien shares an observation in one of his letters, offering an interpretation to this Middle-Earth interaction between Gandalf and Frodo - they both knew the answer to Frodo’s question of where he’d find rest: only passing over the Sea could heal Frodo. His journey will take him beyond the realm of Middle-earth to the shores of Valinor, the Undying Lands where at last his wounds and his weariness will be healed.8
“A reminder for us that the wounds and weariness that never fully heal here on earth will be cured when we pass into the realm of the One who, when things were in danger, gave up and lost his own life so that others may keep theirs.”
Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. The one whose wounds on our behalf provides eternal healing for us.
There are some wounds that will never fully heal on this side of eternity. Until then, we’ll keep waiting and hoping for the strength to endure before we take those final steps. The end of our journey, bringing healing to all our wounds and weariness. Like Jacob walking forward with a limp after wrestling with God9, we will also limp forward from our wrestling until the day our faith becomes sight.
Presence and absence hold hands in our ambiguous loss. There is a certainty that is with us in the midst of all that is uncertain. Our God is the certain Presence that is never absent, and holds hands with the uncertainty that accompanies ambiguous loss.
Lord, give us ears to hear and eyes to see.
You are the God who does amazing things;
you have revealed your strength among the nations.
You delivered your people by your strength…
Psalm 77:14-15
Until next time,
Becky
This quote is considered by many as more of a Tolkien adjacent quote. You can click here for what Tolkien actually wrote and judge for yourself.
In Companions in Suffering by Wendy Alsup, she shares that God’s comforting of Job isn’t what we expect: “I am God” to the guy who’s at the lowest point of his life. She goes on to write, “The trust God calls sufferers to is only seen or known in the context of situations when we do not understand what he is doing.”
A Grief Observed, by C. S. Lewis
I added what’s in parentheses to the quote for further ambiguous loss context. The paragraph right above this reference is also paraphrased from Companions in Suffering, by Wendy Alsup.
The Myth of Closure, Pauline Boss
Wounds That Cannot Be Wholly Cured by
was the incredible resource I gleaned from for our final Tolkien tidbit.The full story of Jacob’s wrestling with God can be found in Genesis 32:24-32.