Letters of Loss & Maybes

Loss and all of its ricocheting emotions have been the centerpiece to many of my writings. I’ve wondered about this. Why do I write about loss so much? Have I not grown at all? I thought I’d already hit the bottom of my grief’s abyss - why am I still writing things that sound like what I wrote at my lowest level?

Maybe because grief can only be hidden for so long. Maybe because grief isn’t a one-time event but a bundle of emotion that, though it may change in size, will always reside within me, if not eventually floating to the surface, then hitting a wall too stubborn to will itself through.

Maybe.

Writing is a powerful and interesting tool. I have written sentences about myself that romanticize that day’s loneliness to the point where if read in a book, one might be tempted to fantasize about being me. Lonely me. How wild is that? I’ve chalked that up to perspective and the power of poetic verbiage. But I’ve also questioned if, when I process the things I distaste, writing doesn’t bring me to truth as much as it allows me to spin a feel-good tale that subdues a mind prone to incessant nostalgia.

In one of my most recent wrestling matches with pain, I wrote down the following and taped it to my wall: “Turn your pain into a story.” A supposed hope. That pain does not have to be pointless, I would agree. But then I began to wonder if I had to turn my pain into anything at all. If I did, would I be spinning yet another romanticized tale short of truth?

Then, as usual, a shift in perspective.

Maybe it’s not turning my pain into a story but hearing the story my pain tells. Maybe it’s not a manipulation of facts, but the side of the story few pay enough attention to hear the voice that speaks on pain’s behalf. What does my loneliness say? What does my disappointment speak to? Where does my pain point to? What does my grief say about my hope, my wholeness, my desires, my capabilities, my purpose, my joy, my decision to live life and believe that it is good?

Is it strange that my love for God and most tangible realizations of His mercy follow the days when my grief is the most exposed?

Maybe all of my writings on pain and grief and loss are actually stories of grace and forgiveness and mercy and love, but it is layers and layers beneath what we have come to know as these sorts of stories.

May you, at your own discretion, call it a manipulation of facts if you deem it so. I, however, when considering it this way, am grateful that I have written so much about loss.

Because maybe if I write about it enough, we’ll all be less scared of painful emotions, and the power they once had to turn us inward and ashamed will be amended into a power that gives us hope in that mercy, grace, forgiveness and love are things to be had.

Maybe.

“Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am in distress. Tears blur my eyes. My body and soul are withering away. I am dying from grief; my years are shortened by sadness...Praise the Lord, for he has shown me the wonders of his unfailing love.” - Psalm 31: 9-10, 21