This Season of Sorrow

I would be lying to say I am fine. I am still walking through this valley of the shadow of death. The world would say to me to toughen up that this is a common thing. My Savior would say to me face that which hurts and together we will walk through the agony of this time. In the wake of my devastation I still have a very real and raw pain. It is as if I can see the end but have not yet arrived. This was an incomplete season in my life by physical standards and when it is complete I believe I will finally place my foot on the base of the mountain at the edge of the valley - Thanks only to Immanueal who has carried me often or I would have sunk into the mire of depression and hopelessness.

Maybe incomplete season seems a strange way of stating it - so maybe this illustration would be better suited. When I was a child in Oklahoma my stepdad and his family and friends were cattlemen and farmers. One summer a severe drought hit - the kind that causes the huge lakes to grow stagnant and ponds to dry up leaving fish on the sand. Acres and acres of hay burned up in the scorching sun that year. As the crops failed the farmers became agitated, worried, restless - some even angry. They knew this would create a shortage in the winter and effect the cattle business. This one loss would have rippling effects that lasted through the winter months. As the season drew on and got closer to what should have been the harvest time they became more irritable, more restless, more worried how things would turn out. Hands and bodies that should have been busy with satisfying labor of cutting, raking, hauling, and storing hay were still. The hired hands went without jobs, farmers used to constant labor found themselves at coffee shops and gas stations. They were anxious just to get past harvest to begin the next season. They were ready to prepare the fields for the winter crops. They had to wait for the season to be completed in order to move to the next - and so they were restless. Even knowing they had the next season to look forward to - it was this one they were in that resulted in empty hours that would have been filled.

Explained: My season of pregnancy was cut short (my season of motherhood to Caleb cut even shorter). Though I fully realize God's season are not measured by man's and His are perfectly timed our physical world is accustomed to the seasons we have laid out and the expected ends we have become familiar with. This fact has been the most difficult for my mothering heart to grasp and reconcile to my faith in a perfect God. My season of pregnancy by our worlds standards should have been 9 months with an anticipated due date (April 27). So the anticipation of joy at this date has turned to a realization of sorrow - and beneath that a realization that though my arms are empty - heaven's are full. But oh how it aches here, on this earth. My hope rests in this - God is able to deliver me into His perfect grace. I also hope for the passing of this season to move on to the next. I do not hope naively, believing the next season will be without sorrow but I do believe that there will be a season of healing. And though this loss remain and I will sorrow at times for what might have been. I am eager to embrace the hope of what will be in the arms of Abba. I eagerly await the blessings whether they be times of sorrow or happiness. My joy and hope are anchored in the cross and my face is set on my Savior's and ever I feel him holding me close. For when I would have been content with just a touch of His garment He saw fit to draw me up into the full embrace of His arms and gently guide me through the valley. And just as he wept for his friends at the death of Lazarus I know He weeps too for me - not because of Caleb's death (for He knows that it was truly a ressurection to a more perfect life) but for the terreble ache I feel. I know too that He allows such brokenness to enter into our lives that we may be more perfectly conformed to Him - to be made more beautiful - So I surrender to His will and rest in His arms and walk this valley to its end with Him as my sustaining hope.