Dear Lord
As it occurred to me, so it occurs to many I see. We get the choice to run and deny or to stand and face. There is the temptation to hide within a veneer of self-protection, so thankful am I that I had no such defence available to me.
It is good, Lord, if we don’t have the ‘strength’ for self-protection, though such an experience is disabling and debilitating. So, feeling weak, we can know, is a great blessing, so long as we can feel and be safe along grief’s journey. Provide for the weak one’s safety, Lord. Give them the listening ear, even if it’s a stranger who can provide that cup of cold water of compassion or a thick warm blanket of empathy.
Help the grieving person see the folly in self-protection—that there is no growth for transformation there. But, as you know, Lord, eyes that are not enlightened will not see the opportunities before them. Help the ailing, therefore, receive encouragement, for their eyes see a hope that only faith can appease. Help them in their surrender, one day, one moment at a time. Build within them the muscle memory that recognises the reward for faith applied.
Help this person, Lord, who is disappointed to the point of despair, who has been blindsided by a loss stark in its unexpectedness, who recoils in a shockingly surreal sorrow. Help them not hide beneath the wings of what they did right, what others have done wrong, what should not have been, and what could have been. Help them, rather, to hide in you, Lord, which is a safe sanctuary from which they may be courageously honest. Help them dwell in the shadow of your Almighty provision.
Even as they enter in one or more manners of expression for therapy, give them courage to be honest, and be with the therapy process and the therapist; that faith will be accorded both, and that nothing that is hard in the journey would be shirked. Help them to take that risk with you, Lord, that they will have the faith that you hold them by your righteous right hand.
Even in betrayal, Lord, help the person who in their loss feels they can trust nobody. Provide this person the very sign they need to see to trust again, and soon! Give them a special piquing of discernment that in their trusting they don’t feel exposed and vulnerable to abuse.
In being honest and courageous, God, help the person see that they please you. Help them know that your countenance toward them is favourable, and that you will protect them sufficiently when they simply must step forward in a faith that may even seem ridiculous to them as they take the plunge.
Most of all, Lord, help any and every person recognise that you are doing something in us through loss that you cannot and will not do until we are brought to our knees beyond self-sufficiency, to teach us finally that we cannot grow unless you do it.
In Christ’s name,
AMEN.
Photo by Max Williamson on Unsplash
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