C.S Lewis, A Grief observed

17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2 Corinthians 3:17

In my latest trip to the Bibles for Missions thrift store where I dropped off more stuff from our 'decluttering', I decided to park my car and go in and browse the stores for little gems.I made a full circle of this store where I saw to my delight the metal file cabinet proudly taking up space with the little price tag  we recently donated. Then I saw what I knew had to be God leading me to it. It was a little C.S. Lewis book, A Grief Observed, a book often quoted by authors I've read on the subject of grief. The sticker price of 79 cents was the clincher for, except I knew I had to buy one more item to make writing a check worthwhile. Sigh. So I looked. So I browse until I found a second book worth reading. I gladly handed the clerk a check for  dollar ninety one cents and the course of doing so she glanced at the title whereas I had a chance to share my 'Maria' story, a story that is more than the loss of a child, but a story that shares God's amazing grace and his step by step walking with each of us through the valley of the shadow of death until we were able to see God's beauty and absolute joy.

That evening, after helping my beautiful bride declutter what will be the garden guest room, I took some time to read a few excerpts of this book. Like a kid in a candy store, I gladly inhaled the words of this magnetic writer. It began with these words, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep swallowing...At other times, it feels like being mildly drunk or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yes, I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me."

Amazingly, those poetically penned words of this amazing writer were describing the grief that all of us will eventually face when someone we loved died. 

In another passage were these words, " On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony.These are at least clean and honest.  But the bath of self-pity, the wallow , the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it--disgusts me. And even while I'm doing it I know it leads me to misrepresent H,herself ( H was the letter he used in describing his wife who died from cancer), Give that mood its head and in a few minutes I shall have substituted for the real woman a mere doll to be blubbered over. Thank God the memory of her is still too strong ( will it always be too strong?) to let me get away with it.

And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief.Except at my job--where I the machine seems to run on much as usual-- I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much.  Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They ay an unhappy man wants distractions--something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It's easy  to see why the lonely become untidy;finally, dirty and disgusting.

I stepped out to drink a glass of water before I continued reading.

"Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy; so happy that you have no sense of needing Him that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to him with gratitude and praise, you will be--or so it feels--welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate when all other help  is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed  in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.  You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic  the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited?   It seemed so once.  And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?"

Alas, I set this jewel of a book down and reflected on my own journey, a journey that carried me through all the same emotions that C.S :Lewis describes in a grace observed.  As I read I am reminded that it is when we properly allow every tear drop to be processed and every painful memory processed that healing will come until one day you will see that God hadn't abandoned you.

I will likely include other thoughts from this beautiful book by this amazing writer.