While preparing for an upcoming message, God gave this to me, so I pray it encourages you…

Two years ago to this day (Facebook reminded me) (see: Photo Above), I shared with the world I was engaged. Less than a year later, I shared we never made it down the aisle.

 Public failure. A few years prior, I’d begun studying the issue of grief; our expectations around it and the practical applications of it.

Ironically, my theological study around this came about after ending the first attempt at the relationship years prior and struggling to shake what would best be described as a “lulling weight” in my chest, even after intentional work with my counselor, mentors, separate grief counseling and nearly four years of intentional singleness that would follow. 2 things amplified my concerns around this:

I thought I had failed God, because I believed in faith He gave me an assignment that I failed to fulfill.  
I thought I had failed my (future) wife because I did not believe it was either equitable or possible, to deal with the recurring grief of an old love, while stewarding a new love.

So while I’ve never worried about God’s will being done around my romantic / family life, I found myself for years being all too comfortable keeping any surrounding interest at Heisman arm’s length or shutting down a potential situation at the hint of “liability” because it was easier to deal with loneliness than the discomfort of mediating the conflict between two dissimilar tenants (recurring grief & new love).

While I’ve acknowledged this tension and have appreciated the “findeth a new love, life, wife” journey since, I see this tension was a gift and is what lead me to a deeper pursuit of Godly wisdom and my questioning the underlying expectation of the “lulling weight” miraculously going away and whether or not it was realistic to believe all grief resolved, even for the matters involving the living, “on this side of glory.”

Interestingly enough, part of what offered me hope was learning about the grief journeys of brothers and sisters I knew personally who were widowed, and how they maintained their love for their late loved one yet were given the capacity to love their current spouses fully.

New children do not cause a parent to love their older children any less, rather, they expand their parent’s capacity to love. While prior love of the living is not something one should look to maintain, I am realizing part of this fallen experience of life, is there are ailments you receive that you don’t necessarily choose. There are injuries that never fully heal. There are people who walk the journey of life, with a limp and just as grief is defined as loss, not all loss results in death, like the loss of a limb, your health, a job, and in this case, the loss of the living.

You can be whole and hurting.

You can move forward, but periodically be moved, by the past.

You can be strong and courageous, yet still embrace this weakness.

As such, while it is possible for time to resolve most instances of “living loss” it is also quite possible, in fact, probable, as the apostle Paul shares in 2 Corinthians 12, that God’s grace is sufficient for a thorn which also comes in the “grieving the living” form. That God would not take them out, but His grace would look comprehensively and sufficiently upon you and expand your capacity to love, alongside your grief.

The same heart which finds the capacity to forgive and sit with joy after betrayal, brutality, and lifelong burdens, is the same one which can make space for juxtaposition of hurt and healing, celebration and suffering, weeping and rejoicing (Ezra 3:13), good and evil (Romans 7), new love and the love of old.

This afternoon I read a quote via @janjowen from Megan Devine which shared,

“Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried”

So I leave you with this:

“Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily carries our burdens.” (Psalm 68:19)

 Even burdens like this.