Grief

Today was difficult.  Grief sounds like the silence in the halls, the ache of broken hearts, the huddle of teenagers comforting one another.  Grief sounds like tears.

Three sophomores from my children's high school were in a car accident this last weekend.  The driver, a boy, was critically injured.  The two girls were killed.

So today we struggled through, asking questions, contemplating the brevity of life, holding each other long, speaking life into one another.  The afternoon came and storm clouds roiled.  Grief sounds like booming thunder and flashes of lightning.  Wind slammed ample drops of rain against the glass as I searched the sky for hope.  For some sign of silver lining.

This.  This is the hard eucharisteo.  The breathing and leaning into the hard moment that... hurts.  So I held my daughter close, breathed her in deep, prayed hard for those mamas and daddies.

“When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?” 
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are                                                  

Grief sounds like the night.  And I'm clinging to hope...  the kind where the psalmist promises that joy sounds like the morning.  And I'm trusting that His grace will penetrate through, heal the broken-to-pieces.