This Place You Are

This place we will all be...

There is no convenient, easy time to lose someone you love, but Newtown surely proved some times are worse than others.

We don't know what to say. We don't know how to help.

So, often we try to "fix" grief to hide our own discomfort. Our response, or lack of it, becomes more about us than them.

Here is what I know of grief. Here is what I would say to the grieving...

There is no easy or convenient way to reach this place you are in.

Sudden. Shocking. Numbed by something totally unforeseen.

Is that more aching than the persistent ebbing of strength, hope fading as life's light ever dims?

I don't know, and I don't really want to know.

All I know is, when we kiss our kids "goodbye" in the morning, we don't expect the calls those parents in Newtown received.

The only bad thing about love is that heartbreak is inevitable for both the dying and the living. For both are loved. And, when separated, both are lost.

Still, where would we be without love? Safe from pain?

More like bereft of joy, of even the possibility of an unimaginable, heart-thumping. breathtaking, soul-rending connection.

I don't think we were meant to live like that, even if we could.

So, we take the risk. We leap. Sometimes we fall.

Actually, we all fall, but sometimes as we tumble headlong into the unknown, we are saved.

It has taken only one glance.

One hand reaching out.

One whispered prayer answered.

One hint of the Infinite, the merest glimmer of the Divine spark.

We cannot love without loss, and we cannot live without love.

So it is with God, and that is the truth for us as well.