Two weeks after my last blog, God lifted my mom from the confinement of a deteriorated painful body and took her home to paradise. So, I’m walking through the grieving process and redefining myself without her and all that went with caring and advocating for her. My grief is an odd mixture of relief and joy and a painful vacancy. I know many of you have walked through the same emotions.
Loss takes many forms – the death of someone very close to us, the death of a relationship, betrayals, the loss of ourselves to circumstances and mistakes, the loss of health, financial loss, years lost to unhealed brokenness, loss of spiritual vitality to the devouring demands of life, or the loss of innocence.
I’ve walked through grief a number of times over the course of my life, but there was a season that was especially devastating and life-altering. In the darkness of that valley, Jesus sat with me and grieved with me as a Wounded Healer. It was His tender compassion that knitted the shattered pieces of my life into a new thing. A vision of the compassion of the Living God is absolutely transforming.
In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them through all the years. Isaiah 63:9 NLT
The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust. Psalm 103:13-14 NLT
You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8 NLT
So compassionate is God toward us that He is deeply moved by our sorrows and feels them with us. He pens them in His book with scarlet ink issuing from His great heart. His tender compassions toward us never fail, never grow thin or exhausted. They are fresh and new at the first light of each day.
So attentive is He to us that He sits with us in our grief and so close that He collects every tear in His bottle of remembrance. Our tears are precious to Him – not one falls to the ground to be forgotten. They are bottled with the tears of Jesus and sealed among His treasures.
Sometimes our tears spill from shame and repentance. These tears open heaven and literally transform us into the image of Christ.
One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. Luke 7:36-38 NLT
The immoral woman was on the floor behind Jesus in her guilt and shame, unable to meet His eyes. She held His feet and wept, then wiped them with her long hair, dripped perfume on them and more and more tears. It wasn’t the expensive perfume, but tears spilling onto His feet that filled His senses and stirred His heart.
I imagine she left with new tears brimming in her eyes – tears of worship and deep joy. Among all the fragrances of worship, it’s the sacrifice of praise from a heart ravished by His compassion that rises as the sweetest.
Tag Archives: Grief
Grieve Well
The morning of April 18, 2017 was the morning that God had planned from eternity past to lift Dick Kearns from the bonds of his body and into the loving embrace of Jesus Christ. All Dick’s days, from conception to death, were ordained by God and written in His book before one of them came to be. His short story on this planet ended on that April morning, but the rest of his eternal story has only just begun.
Dick is the husband of Dixie, one of the 10 women I share life with. We’re called Heirborne, a worship band of all women, and we worship together, pray together, cry together and celebrate God together. We road trip around Oregon dragging sound equipment and instruments to various retreats and events and have a blast.
We’ve been together for more years than I can remember helping and praying each other through the struggles and joys of living of life. Even now, as I type this, one of us was just admitted to the hospital and the text messages of prayer are flying.
Dixie is one of the five vocalists of Heirborne and sings alto. The evening of April 18, she came to rehearsal as usual but grieving. We wrapped our arms, our hearts and our prayers around her. At Dick’s memorial service, we sang, I Will Rise, and, to the astonishment of everyone in the room, Dixie stepped onto the platform, stood front and center with Jamey and Marcy on one side and Rhonda and Denice on the other and she sang out her heart…
There’s a peace I’ve come to know
Though my heart and flesh may fail
There’s an anchor for my soul
I can say “It is well”
And I will rise when He calls my name
No more sorrow, no more pain
I will rise on eagles’ wings
Before my God fall on my knees
And rise, I will rise
I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room. Mine certainly weren’t.
At rehearsal last Tuesday night, she brought a poem she had written and read it to us because she wanted us to know this man of hers whom she deeply loves. I asked if I could post it, and she, rather hesitantly, agreed. I pray that her grief and her hope touches that place in every heart that has known grief.
WHEN I GET HOME
By Dixie Kearns
Going off to work each morning,
Leaving you asleep, alone –
No goodbye or sad forlorning,
You’ll be here when I get home.
Driving home in dark of evening,
Knowing what awaits me soon,
“Is that you, hon? How’s your day been?
I’m sure glad you’re home!”
Weekend brings us both together –
Time to share our lives as one.
‘So good to be with one another,
Joining hearts in our church home.
Family loved and family needing,
Oft I leave to serve my own.
But my heart is always seeking
To come back to you at home.
You received a Godly vision,
Though its scope is still unknown.
You completed your great mission
And God began to call you home
Days of pain and days of suffering,
You endured a mass of stone.
No hope is medicine now offering.
You want just to be back home.
God is good and God is gracious.
My Love, if only I had known
How short was time and moments precious
‘Til Jesus came and took you home.
Now I drive in evening darkness,
Rememb’ring how your lovelight shone.
Up ahead I face great sadness –
You’re not there when I get home.
Loving you so long and deeply –
How to live now that you’re gone?
Memories surround me sweetly.
How I yearn for you at home!
Someday traveling will be over,
No more miles be left to roam.
Then I’ll finally see my Savior.
And you’ll be there when I go home.
Dixie is pictured with the rest of Heirborne on the Events page.