I thought I had uploaded all my old blog posts to my website, but apparently I got (squirrel! No, wait, it’s a cat. Oh, look, a butterfly.) distracted. Here is one of my favorites, posting tonight for a friend. I hope it helps.
“Jesus wept.” The shortest sentence in the Bible is perhaps the most telling. Before the tomb of Lazarus, His beloved friend, whose fellowship He missed, in the face of the grief of Lazarus’ sisters and other friends, looking into the hopeful eyes of the sisters whose faith also reproached Him (“Lord,” Martha said, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” John 11:21, NIV), Jesus faced a choice, a turning point in His ministry. He knew, from having lived there from the beginning, what joy Lazarus now felt in heaven, at the right hand of God. He also knew, being fully human, the depth of the pain His friends who remained on earth felt at their loss. He knew, then, how deeply those He left behind on the cross would mourn Him.
Yet, it was ordained also from the beginning that through Jesus, God would show that He had the ultimate power over life and death, that both were parts of the realm He created. In summoning Lazarus forth from the tomb, Jesus foretold that death was no longer the end, that those who believe would have life everlasting.
This came home to me with aching clarity today, as I continued to mourn the loss of my fiancé, my lover, my partner, my mentor, my playmate, my pastor, my traveling companion, my sounding board, my best friend—in short, the mirror that reflected everything that represented the best part of me. I don’t begrudge him the place he is now. The events of the past month—earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, genocide, abuse, murder—all would have grieved him to the depths of his soul. He said he was weary of the sorrows of this world, so was ready to go on. He was facing pain, suffering, the diminution of all that he was as a vital human being. Now he can chat with Einstein about the properties of time that so absorbed him, have tea with Lewis and Tolkien, listen to Rumi compose new poems, hear Sinatra live. He walks now with Jesus; who could want to take him away from that?
Still, I am faced with continuing, with picking up what’s left of me (our hearts had become so entangled that part of me went with him and part of him remained with me), traveling onward to find meaning in the metamorphosis I underwent during the long journey we shared in such a short span of time. In his own words, that now apply equally to me, “You have changed me. I’m headed to a different place. I will be something other than what I was going to be.” I feel that somehow he passed a charge on to me, changing me forever, and now I have to understand what to do with it. I can’t be the minister/philosopher that he was, because we come from different experiences, yet I can’t remain the person I was before him. So I read the words he wrote and the books he read, listen to stories about him, and reflect on my memories of him. In this way, he continues to teach me, if I am open to learn.
The other night, an unusually bright moon cast its reflected light over the earth. I noticed it as I took items for the next day out to my van. Because he had slowed me down and taught me to experience the NOW, I stopped to absorb the experience. I walked from under the obscuring trees to the end of the street. Clouds tried to blockade that brilliant orb from view, but they couldn’t form a cohesive enough mass to stop the glow. Instead the clouds formed a gauzy curtain that added to the scene with their inky centers and silvered edges. “Oh, honey,” I whispered, remembering his fascination with the phases of the moon, with the primordial rhythms of the earth. “Can you see this?” As I stood there, with the stop sign blocking the streetlight’s glare, the thought suddenly hit me. “What does this look like from your side?”
I have faith, albeit the size of a mustard seed, and I have prayed that God would strengthen it. So I asked God one night, “Lord, you have the power over life and death. You brought Lazarus back. How about now? Could I get a do-over, could we back up to where the doctor came out of ER and have him say ‘We relieved the pressure on his brain and he should recover fully,’ or ‘We’ve moved him to ICU, he’s conscious and you can see him now,’ anything except ‘he went into cardiac arrest and efforts to resuscitate were unsuccessful.’ Could you bring him back to me?” And yet, because of my faith, I acknowledged submission to His will. What I got was that Lazarus was a one-time deal, proof to those of us with imperfect faith that what He did for Jesus, He will do for us, too. And on that day, I’ll see my beloved again, and we’ll have eternity to explore the cosmos holding hands and taking joy in the being together. Until then, I have work yet to do. Lord, give me the wisdom to find it and the strength to complete it.
