My pastor, Anthony Delaney said this “The word ‘bereaved’ comes from an old word meaning ‘robbed.’ All you have to do is live long enough and you will lose someone.”

For many of us that is a hard truth to swallow.

My grief journey has been about trusting God in the dark. I have had to ask myself many questions but today I am looking at these three:

1.what am I carrying?
2. what am I expecting?
3. what am I saying?

I am not a person who dwells on the negative. I want to learn from hard things in my life. I have a God who tells me that I am an overcomer. I am a fighter. I am not a sit down whiner. I want to be a truster – not a ruster! But i know how hard grief can be and how it can derail us.

Let me explain a bit more with this story:

Jim grabbed his suitcase off the luggage carousel and headed outside to hail a taxi. A taxi promptly picked him up and they were on their way. Twenty minutes into the ride Jim had a question for the taxi driver, “Excuse me sir!” said Jim, tapping the driver on the shoulder. “AHHHH HHH!” screamed the taxi driver swerving the taxi across three lanes of traffic finally stopping the car on the opposite shoulder. “What’s the matter?” demanded Jim, thoroughly shaken. “I’m sorry,” said the taxi driver, wiping his brow, “This is my first day on this job!
I’ve been driving a hearse for the last fifty years!”

Sometimes after we experience a period of grief, we can drive around in it for years afterwards. I have met people who have had loss years ago and still carry it around with them. They carry around a spirit of death, not life. You know anyone like that?
People like this walk into the room and say “hi” in a way that makes others just want to leave.

1. What are your carrying?
We have to watch what is in our hand.
The dark will feel darker when we are weighed down.
What weighs you down today?

After grief we can imagine that life will never be interesting or fun again. We can fear the worst and live out a kind of lonely nightmare.

Today is about learning to trust God in the dark. How we move forward, learning to see with the eyes of faith not with the eyes of experience or of circumstance. Not looking around us but looking up.

Let me tell you a little of my journey.
It was a warm May Bank Holiday in 2012 and the whole family were at our house. My 3 brothers and their wives/girlfriends, my family and my Mum and Dad. Everything seemed wonderful. It was a happy day. I remember looking around the room and thinking how at peace everyone was. I did not know that my Mum was having serious pain. Constant pain. She shared it with my eldest brother who is a doctor. He advised her to visit her GP.
She saw the GP who sent her to hospital. She paid for a private scan and they found cancer in her liver.
She had suspected it for some time.
I had known nothing about it.
40 days after this Mum died. It took hold of her very suddenly. Which in some ways is merciful. We were given time to put things to rights and organize everything.

Mum was a great doer. She loved a tidy mind, tidy cupboards and organization down to the tiniest thing.
After she died I had to care for my Dad. He was ok for a month but then a huge wave of despair set in and he just cried constantly. He talked about not wanting to live and I was concerned about his state of mind and his heart. My brothers also took Mum’s death very hard. Those were not easy days.
It fell to me to bring people together, to mediate, to organise and to care for everyone else.
Then my Gran became increasingly frail and I spent more time caring for her and for my Dad. It felt like my own life was over.
One day my Gran (who had dementia and was confused) said “Isn’t it awful that Ems has died?”
Instead of disagreeing with her. I said “yes it is.” The me I knew seemed to be long gone.

I carried all that very heavily. I was exhausted by the smallest thing. I have huge capacity and energy normally but in that season, boiling an egg made me need a lie down!

What was I carrying? Fear. Grief. Loss and sadness. But I was also aware that I was the strong one in the family. So I felt as though I had to keep going. It was all very heavy indeed. I had to learn to PUT IT DOWN. I had to learn to give it to Jesus.
What about you? What are you carrying right now?