Apple Pie and Warmed Vanilla

I'm reading an autobiography of a friend of mine from high school. I'm hard pressed to describe its style. On the surface it is like getting a refreshing citrus flavored facial, making you feel clean and buoyant with new life. You finish the  chapter with a smile on your face and then the deeper current  of his life hits you like a tsunami, without warning, without mercy, surprising and overwhelming the tenuous hold we have on life. In an astute way he has wrapped the pain of abuse, loss, betrayal and the awkwardness of growing up— in a down home Mayberry garment. It comes to you as apple pie warmed and covered in vanilla ice cream, but in the end, it is like your first swallow of hard liquor delivering its intended punch.*


Grief is like that. Nothing is as it appears. What seems like a daylight activity is suddenly cloaked in darkness destabilizing the instruments of perception. It only lasts a moment. I think it is a heavenly reality that invades our veiled world. In the weakest of moments we see our fragility and like a friend of mine said, we see the sacredness of life and the sanctity of death and most of all we see the priceless treasure of a human being. We cannot bear this clear and undistorted vision for longer than a moment or two, so frail is our humanity. But this is what God sees for every lost person who is yet to be redeemed. Perhaps the tsunami is really God breaking in with His perception of the tragedy of the fall and our separation from Him.


Frankly I am ashamed to grieve. It shows my undisguised and unmasked self. I am afraid to receive love in this time because love disturbs the fragile balance of my little boat. I will break down somehow and be exposed as a human being. But Jesus wept. He wept over Lazarus and he wept over Jerusalem. Why? Why did he weep?  It's such a horror to see a person cry is it not? Men hate to see women cry it is said. But why? Because it exposes our powerlessness? No, it's because it expresses the importance of that other person to us, the immense worth of their being and an irreplaceable treasure. Grief is a reminder of the basic economy of human life and preciousness of all that was lost at the fall. Yes, there will be a time in which all our tears will be forgotten, but not today. Today it is time for reflection, for Lent, for the remembrance of the unborn, for each other and for forgiveness of the offenses that sin causes in our lives.  It is good.






*The Rise and Fall of Captain Methane by DA Wingo