A Whisper of a Moment

Wednesday, July 23, 2014 Posted by Katie

For many years I managed under the delusion that big change requires big time. When in reality, sometimes all you need to implement big change is a moment. And then another moment. And another, and so on. Moments can move mountains.

God has been using moments to move my mountains this year.

If you are a regular reader, you know that my family has endured several major losses this year. Even as I write this, I feel the pressure (perhaps imagined) to “quit writing about that already”. But the thing is, and those of you who have suffered loss like me know this...the grief is still there. Some days it feels as fresh as the first moment I discovered one of my loved ones was gone.

It doesn’t seem right. Time should move that along. We should be “all better” now. Sometimes I remind myself of the extent of my loss. Losing three loved ones in almost as many months would be exceedingly hard on anyone. And then sometimes I pressure myself to brush off the grief and move bravely into a new day because, after all, life must go on. And in the midst of this tug-of-war, I am not functioning like I used to. I hate that. I keep trying to make that stop.

What’s puzzling to me is that I seem to have no control over grief. Grief remains whether I choose it to or not. What’s the deal?

I asked God this one night recently. As I said, I haven’t been functioning at full capacity this year and I was feeling defeated (big change requires big time...and this will take forever). And in a whisper (which is how you speak to someone to whom you are sitting very close), He said to me, “Learn about grief. Dive in.” If you know me well, you know I avoid depressing books or movies. It's a self-care thing. But God reminded me of “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis. And in less than five minutes, I had it downloaded on my Kindle, and on page two I found this:

“No one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job - where the machine seems to run on much as usual - I loathe the slightest effort.”

In a moment, a big part of me healed. “That’s me”, I thought. That’s me.

My mountain just moved. Perhaps just an inch. But it moved.

Big change. Small moment. One whisper.

That's what I'm learning about God this year. What about you?