Layers of Love Unending

I’m not sure if everyone knows this, a few here and there do, but just recently I lost one of my dearly beloved childhood heroes… my dad.

& since then,  I have realised the isolation of grief is not so much the grief itself, but the space others allow you to have, when really, it is in that time that we need more than ever to be pressed into. Space sometimes is like donating money to a hurting cause rather than donating your time to a hurting heart. It does something yes, but the healing ointment of love is much more powerful than remaining untouched in one’s pain. It bandages layers of love over our wounds, rather than leaving it open and exposed for the body to heal on it owns with time. However, I hugely have a conviction that we are the body of Christ meant to rush in like healing rain to the dry and desert wounds of the lost. To bandage them when their down, to hold their hand and lead them while they’re blind, to be the light in their darkest of times. The lost, by definition, does not have to mean: having no acknowledgment of Christ whatsoever, but it can entirely describe one who cannot hear Christ, see Christ, or feel Christ, even if it’s not by choice. I would label that as “lost” quite quickly. Grieving hearts are lost, for their pain is louder than all else, even if they don’t want it to be. Layers of love calm our hearts to hear the melodies of Love singing over us again.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever been hit by a wave in the ocean you weren’t expecting, but it nearly knocks the life out of you. When something you don’t envision comes crashing down on you like a tidal wave, you lose your vision, your stance, and your breath. One moment, everything is peaceful, fun, and inviting, the next you didn’t have time to take a breath for. You wonder secretly if you’ll ever come up to the surface again, and the beat of your frazzled heart is louder than ever in your ears.

So from a grieving heart to those who may not know how to help the hurting, I write these words:

1. We don’t need you to fill in the silence, we just want you to be with us in the silence.
2. We don’t need the Mona Lisa to be delivered to our doorstep to feel loved, maybe just a small date involving cookies, coffee, and silliness.
3. We don’t need you to speak words of understanding, but we desperately do need to hear words of life.
4. Mostly, we don’t need fifty formulas for grieving, we just need one friend who sees us for who we still are beyond our pain.

Grief does not have to be as lonely as everyone makes it out to be. It’s supposed to have contrasts like art. One day may be dark, but a friend of light can easily make it starlight. One day may be like a broken record of memories on repeat, but a friend who brings laughter can softly dissolve every fear into the horizon. One day may be like daunting waves, but a friend who sits with us by our raging seas can be a calm sunrise for us to remember hope and to find peace again. Grief doesn’t have to be handled like an incurable disease, it can be held like a precious birth finding new life in a new world.

But just so you know, I am okay.  Now, five months later, I have a little bit of time to sit in silence and have coffee with myself, and to truly find what deeply heals my broken heart.  Maybe art will be my way of healing, maybe songwriting, journaling, or one of the other avenues people have so kindly suggested, but I do know that without the words of hope from my friends, without the constant helloes from their hearts to mine, without their gifts of generosity when anxiety storms, and without their sacrifice to be an anchored them for the ups and downs of me, I would not be okay. I couldn’t pick up a brush to paint in the middle of a sandstorm when I couldn’t even find the canvas in front of me. That’s what the last five months have been. But now, because of the gentleness of my church, family, and friends, I can see the canvas before me again. Now I can find new ways and colors to paint strokes of pain into paintings of promise.

Thank you to everyone who has been so kind to me over the past few months. The grief isn’t over, but the beauty has only just begun.

Forever, I am grounded in gratitude for the words Rachelle Grace spoke over me from week one, “Kaytee, I love the bright parts of who you are, but even more, I love the dark parts of you. They show your depth and mark your beauty.” & thus I began to see the contrasts of art in layers of love unending.

xx