The House of Mourning

One year ago today Justin died.  Yes, there is still sorrow, and heaviness in my heart when I think of him.  It seems unfathomable that it has been over one year since I spoke with him.  It has been a roller coaster for me, and I have learned a lot about myself.  I want to share a few of those thoughts with you...the challenges, and what appears to me, right now, to be my take-away.

Sorrow - I cried at his funeral, as well as other times.  I don't know about everyone, but for me, what we call 'emotional pain' is more akin to heaviness.  It is like a very heavy weight
 inside my chest.  I guess that's why people say their 'heart hurts' when they lose someone.  It is not pain in the sense of slamming your finger in the car door, but it is pain, in a weird and yes, physical way, and I would be lying to deny that sometimes, very much today, I still feel it.
- Take away:  I do now understand those who sorrow, more than I did before.  Sorrow has made me more introspective.  Even though it is unpleasant, I do have a more realistic view of life...and death.  I know now that there is no earthly tonic for sorrow.  A vacation doesn't fix it.  A new smart phone won't dull it.  Holding a baby is about the best earthly pain killer there is for me.  But, I have found that I can have the joy of eternal hope, even in sorrow.

Help - I've always been the guy people come to for help, never the other way around.  As a result, I don't talk to others about my heartache, problems or struggles...I have felt like the answer man and the answer man doesn't need answers, he dispenses them.  That has gotten me into a heap of trouble a few times through the years.  Some stuff you just can't handle by yourself, 
you need to talk to someone else about it.  I ached for a long time about some of these things I'm sharing with you today without talking to anyone about it.  Thinking about 
talking to someone made me feel weak, and people around me don't need me to be weak, they need me to keep a stiff upper lip as they say.  That wasn't a good choice.  Then, when I did begin to try to talk about it some, I learned that almost everyone is more interested in their own problems, no matter how trivial, than they are in yours.  Thankfully God did bless me with a wife and a couple of friends who were not so self centered.
- Take away: When someone comes with a heartache or sorrow, listen to them.  Often all they need is someone to sorrow with them.  Don't think you have to have some magic answer to take away the heaviness, just share it with them.  And for goodness sake, don't be so self centered that you turn the conversation to some problem or heartache of your own.

Memories - Justin used to tell me that we are all just two generations away from no one remembering us.  I argued with him [as we often did with one another], after all, don't we still remember Abraham Lincoln?  Julius Caesar? Actually no.  No-one alive today actually remembers Abraham Lincoln.  We remember what we have learned about him, but no-one remembers him.  Justin was right, and that realization caused me to feel like I needed to remember him.  Just remember everything I could about the times we were together, on three continents, the night before his wedding, every detail, because so many of those memories are shared by no-one else, and if I lose them, they are gone forever.
- Take away:  I have learned that the only real value in memories is the blessing they are to you right now.  Memories are, like dreams, strangely personal.  No matter how hard I try to remember details about Justin, even if I were able to perfectly keep every memory vivid, when I die, those memories die with me. 
 Even writing them down doesn't help anyone else remember them.  So, when you do remember, just enjoy the moment, but don't torture yourself by trying to remember it all.  I think its wise to hold on to memories that comfort you, but you have to remind yourself that they are gone, and memories are not real life, they are just memories of life that used to be, and no longer is.

Death - I got new glasses recently, and now, everything I see is seen through those new lenses.  They are progressive lenses [low power at the bottom, higher power as you go up] and what is weird about them is that they bring some things [what I am directly looking at] into focus, but they distort other things, and they don't really fix my vision, they just help me get by.  I got new glasses metaphorically when Justin died, and now, everything I see is seen through that lens...the lens of coming death.  I became acutely aware of my own 

impending death.  Not that it bothers me, really, but it is there.  I expect death.  I'm not often surprised to hear of death, even untimely death, but I didn't often think about my own impending death.  Now I do, pretty often.
-Take away:  Like my progressives, the new glasses of keen death awareness bring some things into much clearer focus, but they also distorts some things.  One distortion is joy which I'll talk about next, I'm sure there are others that I'm not yet aware of.  As to the clearer focus, I am going to die, and just as sure as you are reading this you are going to die too.  So what will we do about it?  I'm choosing to be All In with Jesus Christ.  He is the only one who ever beat death.  He's the only hope I have of beating death.  Justin believed that, and so do I.

Joy - Death is a joy-sucker.  Not just at the moment, but for the long haul.  The biggest challenge for me has been the failure of joy to overcome the heaviness of death.  Do you remember in the Wizard of OZ when the wizard said "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"?  But once they had seen him, they knew the magic of the wizard wasn't real.  I have known, and believed, for years that there is a man behind the curtain, but when Justin died I saw the man behind the curtain.  His name is death, and he is coming.  That is a real joy-killer.  For a while, I allowed him to rob me.  Sure Christmas time is fun; gifts, songs, family...but we are all going to die.  A birthday party is great; love the cake, candle's and balloons, but we are still going to die.  Great meal tonight honey, but we are going to die.  It taints everything.  Life is irrelevant.  It becomes a brief moment of smiles and tears, then it's over.  I felt myself becoming an existentialist.  It's really very depressing.
-Take away: When I finally did talk about this, a dear friend recommended I read Ecclesiastes.  I don't know if you are familiar with Ecclesiastes, but my wife didn't think that was such a good idea.  Solomon makes a pretty strong case for existentialism.  But I took his advice, and found it strangely comforting.  I'd found a com-padre in my emptiness, and he was far beyond me.  Not only is life vanity [worthless] to Solomon, but it is Vanity of Vanities.  He confirmed that life it totally meaningless.  Whatever you build will someday crumble, what you earn will be spent, what you accomplish will fade away or be eclipsed.  Then, to top it all off, people won't remember you.  Nothing in life is worthwhile.  Then, at the end, the wise man gave me the answer.  Serve God, keep His commands.  That glorifies my creator, and that gives everything meaning.  What a shocking turn around, every little detail in life goes from worthless to worthwhile.

Over-reaction - I have become an over-reactor.  I don't know why, I don't think I've always had a propensity toward that, at least not that I'm aware of.  I have tended to make mountains out of molehills, but I've seen in myself a tendency over this last year, to just react, almost out of instinct, to what happens around me instead of thoughtfully responding.  I'm not sure why.  Justin was so cerebral that one struggle he had was trying to reason himself to a solution to the Pancreatic Cancer, and the despair that comes from facing something you can't out think.  We talked about that quite a bit.  Maybe I've just internalized that.

-Take away:  My dad told me one time that as we get older, we don't get better, we just get more of what we always were.  That is a sobering thought to me and motivates me to know that my struggle against weakness, failure, sinfulness, will not end in this life.  There isn't going to be that A-ha moment when it all clears up and everything gets easy...not until death.  We are in a war, a very real, spiritual war, and we are constantly under attack.  We must be constantly fortifying ourselves; the enemy is an expert at exploiting the cracks in our defenses...even weaknesses we don't know exist.

Change - I would love to be able to tell you that all of these realizations changed me in some fundamentally positive way.  That I'm not impatient with my children anymore because I realize I could lose them and they will lose me.  That I don't argue with my wife over petty things because my heart is set on things above and not things on this earth.  

That I'm more conscientious about returning phone calls, answering email, and just keeping in touch because I understand the fundamental need we all have for relationship.  That my sermons are somehow more insightful, more spiritual, more convicting and effective because of the angst of my soul.  But the sad truth is that I'm still the same old me.  
-Take away: I have learned that the death of a friend, though it touches you to the core, exposes who you are, it doesn't change who you are...only the death of Jesus can do that.

After he found out that he had cancer, and that it was really bad, Justin was asked to come preach in his home congregation.  Leading up to that, he told me "I know that lots of people will come just to see if I look different, and they will expect me to have some deep insight because of what I've been going through...I don't know what I'm going to say, I just don't have anything profound to tell them..."  When he went and preached, late that night the phone rang.  "So what did you tell them?", I asked.  "I just preached the gospel", he said.  "The same story I've been preaching for 30 years."  I guess that's all there is to say.  In the final analysis, Justin bet his soul on that story...me too.

Better to go to the house of mourning

Than to go to the house of feasting,

For that is the end of all men;

And the living will take it to heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter,

For by a sad countenance the heart is made better.

The heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 7:2-4