i still believe. but when i hear people speak of the joy of answered prayer, it seems to me that if i believe THAT, then that must mean that our family's prayers were NOT answered. but after all, aren't ALL prayers answered? aren't we taught that? i still pray. but my perspective is so different now. i pray with less faith. oh, not that the prayer WON'T be answered but all my prayers previously have been so hopeful and earnest and i SO believed in the power of prayer. that was before. now i understand. i can't pray anymore expecting. it is more of a half-hearted "well, God, i am praying for such-and-such but i know you already know what you're going to do with this so i'll just wait and see what happens". sigh. that said, consider the following.........i picked up a little book by c. s. lewis entitled "grief observed". it is lewis' personal account of dealing with the grief he experienced over the death of his beloved wife. a respected theologian, lewis speaks honestly, bluntly and with many questions. his strong faith is obvious - but that doesn't preclude him from feelings of anger and hurt and confusion. he isn't ashamed nor is he embarassed to express his true feelings - page after page of strong words for millions of readers to experience. his intent was not to be a spiritual example of the correct way to deal with grief - it was just the sharing of his own "mad midnight moments".
in the forward, madeleine d'engle writes "perhaps all believing people feel, like lewis, a horror of those who say of any tragedy, "Thy will be done," as though a God of love never wills anything but good for us creatures. he shows impatience with those who try to pretend that death is unimportant for the believer, an impatience which most of us feel, no matter how strong our faith." mrs. d'engle experienced a loss of her own and, like lewis, kept a journal, saying "it is all right to wallow in one's journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. what we work out in our journals we don't take out on family and friends. i am grateful to lewis for the honesty of his journal of grief, because it makes quite clear that the human being is allowed to grieve, that it is normal, it is right to grieve, and the christian is not denied this natural response to loss." she goes on to say that "lewis wrote 'don't talk to me about the consolation of religion, or i shall suspect that you do not understand; for the true consolations of religion are not rosy and cozy, but com-forting in the true meaning of that word: com-fort.... strength to go on living.' lewis rightly rejects those who piously tell him that his beloved is happy now, that she is at peace. we do not know what happens after death, but i suspect that all of us still have a great deal to learn and that learning is not necessarily easy."
d'engle continues "lewis had the courage to yell, to doubt and to kick at god with angry violence. this is a part of healthy grief that is not often encouraged. it is helpful that c.s. lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. it gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."
in the introduction, lewis' step-son writes "this book is a passionate result of a brave man turning to face his agony and examine it in order that he might further understand what is required of us in living this life in which we have to expect the pain and sorrow of the loss of those whom we love. very few men could have written this book, and even fewer men would have published it. it is also a stark recounting of one man's attempts to come to grips with and in the end DEFEAT the emotional paralysis of the most shattering grief of his life."
lewis writes "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. 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....i almost prefer the moments of agony. these are at least clean and honest. but the bath of self-pitty, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it - that disgusts me. and even while i'm doing it i know it leads me to misrepresent my beloved herself......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, so happy 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 other help is in 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. why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?.......we are reminded that the same thing seems to have happened to Christ on the cross but does that make it easier to understand? the conclusion i dread is not "so there's no God after all" but "so this is what God's really like. deceive yourself no longer."
and Lewis' stepson concludes "in the end, what shines through the last pages of his journal of grief is an affirmation of love, his love for his wife and hers for him, and that love is in the context of God's love.....what many of us discover in this outpouring of anguish is that we know EXACTLY what he is talking about. those of us who have walked this same path, or are walking it as we read this book, find that we are not, after all, as alone as we thought. c.s. lewis, the writer of so much that is so clear and so right, the thinker whose acuity of mind and clarity of expression enabled us to understand so much, this strong and determined Christian, he too fell headlong into the vortex of whirling thoughts and feelings and dizzily groped for support and guidance deep in the dark chasm of grief. if we find no comfort in the world around us, and no solace when we cry to God, if it does nothing else for us, at least this book will help us to face our grief, and to 'misunderstand a little less completely."
C. S. Lewis "Grief Observed" Zondervan Publishing House
