grief and grace, expounded

(further thoughts relating to the previous post. it may be helpful to explain that these two posts are taken straight out of my personal journal. taken, not in an effort to garner any sort of attention to the struggles at hand, simply with the further realisation that a life shared will enrich many other lives.)

I believe spiritual warfare is real. I believe that Satan, or his minions, or the world, or my own broken nature, or whatever you need to call it will always strive to keep me from growth. I believe this because the times of my life in which I have been the most tempted towards evil, and have usually given in to such temptation, have always come immediately before life defining events. There was the period in 2005, when my faith was being redefined. There was the nite before I went to live in England for Bible college. There was the nite before I drove to Portland to start a new chapter in life. Then there was a couple weeks ago, the first nite of Passover, the nite before our planned Seder.

Everything inside me told me that, because I had fallen, I was not worthy to lead my friends in a spiritually centered meal. But a tiny voice, and Lucas' encouragement, told me not to give in to this lie, not to give sin a victory. With broken wings and a bleeding heart, I stumbled through the Seder, a 4,000 year old tradition passed to me by friends back home, and on to my friends here.

I felt no direct spiritual comfort that evening. But I later learned that it was a very rich experience for my friends. One they received as a tangible and symbolic expression of the energy of God. He used my shattered soul, racked with grief, to channel His grace into an act of divine communion. This was a meal with Family, in every beautiful sense of the word. Had I given in to the grief and called off the meal, the experience would have never happened.
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To know that I can be used in spite of myself is humbling, to say the very least. To be faced with duality in my life, at one point being used as a blessing, at another point causing pain, is confusing. But it teaches me to not make too much of my mistakes. Yes, my sins are hideous. But I am not. Just as I am not agape, I am merely a channel through which His love sometimes flows, so am I not sin, I am merely a channel through which evil sometimes flows. I cannot deny that my actions are my own, but I am not God's enemy, even though I may at times use the weapons of evil. The key is an increasing desire to see agape flow through us ever more than sin.

grief and grace, expressed

"The most helpful offering to a lost soul, or even to ourselves when we feel lost, is an encounter with virtue, a taste of unconditional love. Virtue is far more convincing than any words of advice -- it is an expression of the energy of God; it touches us at the soul level, it is the vessel of that unconditional love."
- Br Peter Reinhart, "Bread Upon the Waters"

I went to a "support group" of sorts at Imago on Monday. It is called The Refuge, and we were discussing grief. Grief is usually connected with loss, but I seem to feel it differently than this. The heaviest, most tangible form of grief that I experience is grief over my own sins. Specifically, those sins that directly hurt another person.

Just over a week ago, this grief manifested itself at 3:45 am as a tremendous fit of anxiety. I awoke from a restless sleep, roused by my own anguished screams, my whole body tense and shaking. As soon as I recognised the wailing as my own, they subsided into bitter tears. The actions that caused this scene are still haunting me, but the expression has not been as raw as that nite. But for some reason I feel like they need to be. I feel like my sins can only be atoned for by a sorrow that eats away at my peace. But it is not eating away at me. I am on a pendulum, swinging daily between the experience of total numbness that ignores pain, to a forgiveness that conquers the pain.

I don't like the numbness. Being numb causes me to ignore grace, and grace is necessary to show me how to grow and move forward. And while numb, it is too easy to fall back and actually find a type of false comfort by entertaining the idea of repeated vice.

The grace side of the swing is far better. The pendulum actually began with grace, which was received only hours after I woke up. I confided my pain to Lucas, who did not offer any advice, but simply communicated God's love to me. He touched me on the soul level as a conduit of God. As I confessed my pain and my failures, I received the assurance of God's forgiveness, solidified and made tangible through brotherhood.
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Experiencing grief and grace are just two realities of the life we live. When this grief is made tangible, the bitterness can break our spirits. But the sweetness of grace made tangible is infinitely strengthening when felt against this backdrop of grief. The pain is not taken away, the pendulum does not stop swinging, but power is given to move onwards.