When Grief Stalks

Cinnamon coffeecake plunges high up my plastic fork while brown sugar topping flakes and tumbles from the top. Espresso grinders whir loud then fade to the music from overhead speakers. Three inch pink baby shoes glide by in a black stroller; purple sippy handles peak from a stroller's corner. Wooden coffeehouse chairs scrape and clunk hollow, and I sip my hot refilled coffee from blue cardboard.

On a morning of Monday's clean laundry piled high and an upcoming evening church softball game, we received word of a tragic car accident. A former youth group student and his family of five were killed in a multiple car pile-up involving a semi-truck. His family's faces still grin happy in the missionary magnet on my fridge, just a month away from their departure to a new life in Japan.

My cell phone's text message blinked the news, and it was too awful to believe or to speak aloud.

"What?" Mark kept asking me in my gaped silence, "What?!"

Our shock and grief looked like crying in Mark's arms, my tears and nose running and wiped on his shirt unconsciously while we prayed. Grief looked like numb silence and staring slack-jawed out the window.


"What are you looking at?" Daniel wants to know, peering out the window too.

"Just thinking about our friends, bud," I murmur, and we both fall silent.

Earlier, concerned by our tears and unsure how to respond, Daniel had fled the room. Following him, I found him burrowing under his blankets in the dark room.

"We can be sad together. It's okay to cry and to ask God hard questions."

My words falter and fall short today. Typing a short message to my friends to mourn their son and his family, I tell them that we ache and cry with them.

Community is shared grief, shared silences, shared tears. And God's chest is big enough for those hot tears and raw words too.

In the Muggy Nights after a Month of Headlines

I remember it, how the air was hot even though it was September 2007 and how Mark had crossed the stage, his shoulders carrying the pain.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Mick Baker Rooster, Creative Commons, cc license

Photo Credit: Flickr user David, Creative Commons, cc license

His voice softer than normal, he had smiled at the forty or fifty students in the darkened worship sanctuary and said, "Well, we had planned to tell you exciting news tonight--"

Several junior high girls squealed in excitement, missing the qualifier.

"-- about being pregnant, but Jen and I miscarried yesterday. We're sad and grieving but we know that God is still good."

The teens had gasped, sighed, and moved instantly to crowd around us. Not trusting my voice, I had simply nodded and bit back tears. The students and youth leaders engulfed us, putting hot hands on our shoulders, backs, arms, and heads.

Their words spilled out on a sticky muggy September night, and my sadness spilled down and over. They spoke words of grief aloud to us, and to our God, and they hugged us tight.

Today, in this week of muggy days where sadness leaks out for so many names, that image flashes back to me. Because the most comforting thing about that night in 2007 was how they came alongside to simply cry with us and to honor that little one's life.

In our world with so much violence and grieving and death today, can we just come alongside in the muggy nights to say: we cry with you. We ache with you.

Your loved ones' names matter. Their lives mattered. 

We ache and grieve with you. We moan in surprise and pain at each new headline, and we say your names from Florida, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,  Louisiana, Minnesota,  Texas, Syria, and more.

Your names matter. Your lives mattered, and we ache with you and sit in respectful crying sadness with you in the dark muggy nights.


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