Mae's Thread: Weave

Finding a pattern of purpose through your story.

An Important Note: This blog post may touch on themes of grief and trauma, including the loss of a child, accidental death or injury, or moral injury. It is written from a peer's perspective, not a professional counselor.If you think this content could be difficult for you to read, we recommend having a trusted counselor review it first.

What I Couldn't Always See

There was a time when I couldn't imagine feeling real joy ever again. Yet, do you know that as the years have passed, I have felt moments of incredibly deep joy?  To me, this is nothing short of a miracle.

It's something that I would never have believed to be possible, even if someone had stepped right out of a time machine to tell me. I have felt joy in the summer, when I've watched my children's staticky hair bouncing in the air as they jump on the trampoline in the backyard.

I've felt it in the winter, when we've tumbled around in our snowsuits trying to stay upright long enough to finish building a fort at the park behind our house. I've even felt it when the same ol' sweetness of God's presence has surrounded me in church during a chorus of community worship—just the same way it used to do before the accident ever happened. 

In fact, I believe that because of what I've been through, I have often treasured these beautiful moments in life even more than I would have before. To me, there is an extra preciousness to them because I didn't know I could ever feel that way again.

Now, it wasn't something that came back to me right away. For me, it took a whole lot of time to start feeling it again. Not to mention, it has ever since been “mingled with grief” (as Tolkien put it) and not without competing feelings of shame.

All the same, it's still been a miracle to me that I've been able to experience it at all. And if joy and shame show up at the same time in your own life, I want you to know this is a widely recognized experience after trauma and loss. It is a common reaction and you are not alone. 

Center Stage

For the past few years my mind has been on eternity more than ever before. When I think about it, it makes me consider the idea that a big part of the journey of life (I believe) is just God trying over and over again to help us to see past the physical.

We have to go a bit deeper, examining beyond the superficial, if we want to understand the true nature of anything. In our business transactions, in our relationships, and in our trips to the grocery store where we must stare down boxes of Lucky Charms and Hostess Angel Food Cake. Aren't the covers ever so very appealing?

It makes me think of photography. Have you ever thought about how every great photo has a defined focal point? Choosing what that focal point needs to be matters immensely, because by necessity everything else is going to fade into the background—right into obscurity.

The background has its own purpose, but compared with whatever is taking center stage, it is “vague and incomprehensible,” to quote Solzhenitsyn.

We must reach for the intangibles that are more real and everlasting than any of the tangibles ever could be.  As they always were. We just needed to focus our lens on what mattered the most all along.

So, what are these intangibles, you might ask?

1 Corinthians 13:13 says:

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (NIV)

These are abstracts, and there's more that awaits us in the “new heavens and the new earth” than abstract ideas. But these are a great place to start! 

One could take an entire lifetime trying to keep faith, hope, and love on center stage.

The Bird’s Eye View

When it comes to healing from trauma, we each have the choice to either “become bitter, or become better.” I believe a huge part of “becoming better” is aiming to focus on things of eternal worth (like faith, hope, and love) rather than focusing on the here and now. This is one of the things that has provided me with personal strength to keep going during the difficult days.

“On the surface of swift-running water you cannot make out the reflections of objects near or distant. Even if it is not muddy, even if it is free of foam, reflections in the ceaselessly wavering ripples, the boisterously shifting race are deceptive, vague, incomprehensible.

Only when, from stream to stream, the current has reached a placid estuary, or in still backwaters, or in small lakes with never a tremulous wave, can we see in the mirror-smooth surface the smallest leaf of a tree on the bank, every fiber of a fine-combed cloud, and the intense blue depths of the sky.

So it is with you and me. If, try as we may, we never have been and never shall be able to see, to reflect the truth in all its eternal fresh-minted clarity, is it not because we are still in motion, still living?…”

—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Reflection in Water (translated) 

Some days can feel much harder than others. Yet there's so much we can't see day to day. One unexpected tiny spark of kindness can alter the course of your entire existence.

Jesus tells us,

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).

He is reliable when all else is shifting sand beneath our trembling feet. And He can bring Heavenly perspective and purpose into our lives, little by little, one day at a time.