I received the sad news yesterday that a person I had shared 8 yrs of my life with and then some...had passed away. Being the deep thinker that I am which at times is good and at times not so good would not allow me to just blow off the level of grief I feel and would not have expected at such news. After all, this person has not been an active part of my life for almost 11 years now. I understand from the natural that relationships intertwine us in ways we don't even realize no matter how much time passes or what the cause was of that relationship being severed.
One of the things I have learned through other losses, and there have been a few, is that sometimes what we are grieving isn't what is obvious. I am not grieving so much the void in my life from their absence, I grieved over that many years ago. But what I did have, though unaware of it, was the expectation that one day this person would have the opportunity to witness the full restoration God has done in my life, and to see how well my girls had turned out, which I attribute partly to this now deceased person being in my life. It mattered to me that he could feel good knowing he had contributed to how they (my girls) turned out by being there for me when no one else was. When someone dies accepting the reality that you will never see them again, (at least on earth), or that they will never hear anything you might have wanted to say to them, creates a pain matched by nothing else . I am so very grateful for the comfort that only God can bring during such a time. I can't imagine dealing with the death of anyone without it. Or facing death without the hope that knowing Jesus, who conquered death brings. Those who die in Christ live forever with Him, and one day we will meet again.
I have learned sometimes relationships that turn out in a way that we think is the result of something horrible about ourselves isn’t always the whole truth. People are put in our lives by God for a specific purpose, but without His perception and His boundaries that purpose gets distorted and needless to say the enemy is quick to exploit anything in our life that he can to cause us pain in any form possible. I know that being who I am today is due in part to all that I have experienced in my life whether good or bad, and no matter how bad, nothing is beyond being redeemed, if we give it to God. I cannot despise my past simply because others might look at me with disdain at how flawed the image of Christ was in me at that time. I can only reflect that which I have gazed upon and received myself as with any of us, and unfortunately before getting saved much of what I gazed upon wasn't much like Christ at all. I find it sad that so many make judgments based upon a reflection that does not meet their expectations, yet fail to see that in light of the full image of Christ we all reflect a flawed image to one degree or another. We must remember that. Christ and Christ alone is the radiance of Gods glory (unflawed) and the exact representation of His being (Hebrews 1:3). We are all being changed from one degree of glory to another and the completion of that happens after we leave this earth and return to the one who created us in Christ.
God Bless you my friend and I will always thank God for the time He allowed us to share on our journey...until we meet again.
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