The Fine Balance

It’s been almost two months since Ben died, and since I’ve been here in Africa it’s been a little bit easier to push aside the painful thoughts of how precious he as and how much I miss him.  There has been so much going on and so many other things to focus on it has made avoidance easy, and probably necessary.  But there is a list of about eight songs that immediately bring him to mind and one of those (My Sweet Melissa by the Allman Bros.) has come up on the random shuffle of Mark’s iPod three times today.  We just fast forward through it but each time I have had to push down the hurt, and this time I can’t.  When this pain comes there is no soothing it, it runs so deep and it feels so merciless.  It is such a sharp pain and even though I know that it may dull with time, it will never completely dissipate because we will never get Ben back again.  We will never get to create new memories with him or hear him laugh or see him be silly or receive his sweet affections.  You know how each person has their own individual way of pouring out their love and respect for you, Ben really did and I will miss that.  Ben was consistent in telling us that he thought highly of us, and that he really respected our faith, our marriage, and how we are raising our kids.  I felt like he admired us and that means so much.  In the end, I just keep thinking that I hope he died knowing how much we loved him and how I always believed he would overcome the shadows that hung over his life and would live in the glory that God has placed within him.  I guess that’s what we all saw in him, that beautiful person that was within him and that made us long to be around him no matter what he did.  

I have a fear that all of the things that I believe, the things that comforted me after he died, that I told my dad and that I spoke of at his funeral, that maybe those things aren’t true- that maybe I just want to believe them because they make me feel better.  I don’t really think that but there is a part of me, that old heritage of fundamentalism that says that God does not have grace for someone who lived as he did.  But the truth is that I receive that comfort through prayer and scripture, I didn’t just make it up.  I’m not one to comfort myself with things that aren’t of God, because what comfort is a pack of lies?  Anyway, each time I let myself feel this pain I am left to take the next breath, and then the next, and beg for mercy and God’s presence in the lives of those of us who are left behind.  I pray especially for my sister, Julie and my nephew Jeremy, and my parents.  I pray because I know that that only Christ and his mercy and his deep suffering can keep us from drowning in this suffering, and he knows pain deeper than this.  It was he who planted this love for Ben within our hearts, and he who can heal us.