Jan. 7, 2012
I came across this verse in the Bible almost eight years ago
while I was grieving the death of my son. During the first few months after the
accident, I was unable to do much other than sit and read my Bible and write. I
just surrendered to the grief, as wave after wave of immense, soul wracking
pain threatened to wash me away and smash me to bits in a tsunami of tears. As
I went through the process, there seemed to be two parts to my consciousness:
the intellectual side that knew that my son was gone and nothing would bring
him back; and my mother’s heart that was full of a thousand questions and
irreconcilable whys. Why didn’t he look before he crossed the road? Why was the
taxi driver that hit him so careless? Why didn’t he just break a leg instead of
being fatally injured? Why? Why? Why?
The futility of these questions eventually began to sink in,
as I came to terms with the unalterable truth, and nothing would ever change
the fact that my son was gone. I will not see my son this side of heaven again,
and I eventually came to see that my very happiness depended on my ability to
accept the unacceptable. One of the things that helped me was this bible verse,
which is found in 1 Thes. 5:18. I had trouble wrapping my mind around what this
verse was saying, and argued with God, saying, “You have got to be kidding, how
can I possibly be thankful for my son’s death?” However, I quickly saw that
being grateful in a
circumstance was not the same as being grateful for the circumstance.
The reason that my faith is so enduring is because I have
tested the precepts in the Bible and found them to be powerful. Every time that I have trusted
God, He has proven His unshakeable love and grace. I swallowed hard and decided
to take the faith plunge as I decided to depend on Him to take care of me, and
I said a prayer of thanks that went something like this: “Father God, I will
never be glad that my son died, but I trust you and give thanks to you in the
midst of my sorrow.” As I prayed this prayer, I felt a significant shift
within, some of the blackness began to lift, and I started to see God’s goodness,
love and mercy that had been buried all along in the depths of my grieving .
Surviving such a devastating loss holds within it the gift
of gaining a greater perspective on life. I have found that the usual things in
life don’t usually faze me, as most challenges are insignificant in comparison
to losing a child. I have also been given the blessing of greater appreciation
of the small moments. I have learned only too well that the people that we love
are transient, we cannot hold onto them no matter how desperately we wish to.
Our children grow up and leave us in one way or another, friends sometimes move
on, parents die, and families change. I try to savour every experience as if it
is my last, as I know only too well that it may be.
In spite of these valuable life lessons, seven and a half
years later, I occasionally find myself getting grumpy about silly little
things, and forgetting to be grateful in all circumstances. My challenge to
myself for the New Year is to practice gratitude, no matter what my
circumstances. I intend to blog on these situations and to share how this
attitude impacts the situation. I challenge those of you who might read this
blog to do the same and add to the discussion on this blog so that others might
see how gratitude in all circumstances impacts your life.
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