Mourning makes us poor; it powerfully reminds us of our smallness.  But it is precisely here, in that pain or poverty or awkwardness, that the Dancer invites us to rise up and take the first steps.  For in our suffering, not apart from it, Jesus enters our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently up to stand, and invites us to dance.  We find the way to pray, as the psalmist did, “You have turned my mourning into dancing” (Ps. 30:11), because at the center of our grief, we find the grace of God.   (Henri Nouwen)

Never before has the reality of our life as a vapor (James 4) or a fading flower (Isa 40) been so tangibly real in my own life as it has in the last month or so… yet simultaneously, it is as if I am living in slow motion right now, where every breath seems to come to me just as slow as it leaves me, where every joy stuns and overwhelms me as it slowly washes over me and every sorrow wounds me as it steadily penetrates all my pretentious defenses.  Some days I feel like I’m the person in that climactic scene that we’ve all seen in the movies where the slow ballad plays and the main character is taking stock of his or her life through one slow motion glimpse or memory after another.    It’s amazing how even in the small things… like a lily opening up her ’soul’ to the sun after a sweet spring rain OR the innocent delight of my little Noah as he runs from one side of the room to the other while turning his cute smiling face to find Mommy’s delight in him as he passes me by… in these little, slow-moving moments, my eyes seem to open to Something, or Someone, more alive than life itself.

The days have been indescribably slow, yet indelibly transforming.   In the same chapter by Henri Nouwen quoted above, he says:

“I once saw a stonecutter remove great pieces from a huge rock on which he was working.  In my imagination I thought, That rock must be hurting terribly.  Why does this man wound the rock so much?  But as I looked longer, I saw the figure of a graceful dancer emerge gradually from the stone, looking at me in my mind’s eye and saying, “You foolish man, didn’t you know that I had to suffer and thus enter into my glory?” 

Mourning, loss, suffering, pain… all of these have an unwavering power to reveal our humanity – our smallness in the scheme of things – as well as our deep disdain for said weakness.    In the best of circumstances, it is easy to sing the old song, “I Surrender All…”  but when push comes to shove, those words do not fall from our lips quite as freely.  Or maybe they do, but the weight of them upon our souls is absolutely crushing if we are truly ‘drinking the cup.’   

I have been ”enjoying” that place of crushing these last few months.   I find that I am utterly helpless in this experience of physical pain.  I can take the medicines that are available to me and I can go through a short list of things that might help, but at the end of the day, all I can really do is endure.  And even enduring has taken on an entirely new meaning.  It’s hard to explain, but quite honestly, I have never experienced this kind of pain before and it has been a trial by fire unlike anything I have ever known.   Have you ever felt something, whether physically or emotionally, that you really (in all honesty, with no drama or exaggeration) thought that there was no way you could take one more second of… that it was too much and in its absolute desolation, you were left reeling as you tried to figure out a way to stop it, get out of it, or just do absolutely anything so you didn’t have to experience one more minute of it??

A friend of mine, D, had one of those labor and deliveries that we all pray will never happen to us.  Her baby’s head was turned and literally ”stuck” in the birth canal after hours and hours of labor.  The epidural that she was given to help alleviate the excruciating pain had somehow come unplugged, so she was left to experience every second of it.  Afterwards she recalled reaching a point in the midst of it where she just knew, “This is it.  I cannot go on any longer.”  And when she was describing just how bad it was and how she had reached that place where she knew she couldn’t take it anymore… I remember another friend, who we will call MB, responding (in a way that only he could get away with), “What does that mean?  What was the alternative?”  Meaning, what other option did she have?

And that, my friends, is the crushing blow.  There are no options.  It might get better, it might stay the same, or it may even get worse, but time will still keep moving and there is no other way around what lies ahead… the only way is THROUGH it.  And it is in our journey through that we find this profound invitation from the Lord. 

Because you see, He too went through and not around.  Jesus, though being in very nature God Himself, made Himself nothing, humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a Cross.   He suffered more than any man, before or since.  He was beaten and scourged so much so that He was unrecognizable as a man.  Yet He was God… unlike us, He had a choice to go above or around or any other way He wanted, but He chose to go through… Jesus chose the Cross.

Now if God went through and not around, where does that leave us?

Well… first and foremost, it means we are not alone.   There is no pain too horrific, no loss too unimaginable, no depth too dark and impenetrable that Love hasn’t travelled the road before us.   Love went to the abyss and death didn’t win… even the grave could not contain Him.    He united Himself to us forever when He took on flesh and He invites us to know something of Himself even (and especially) as we travel down the terrifyingly dark alleyways life brings us.   God chose to reveal the passion of His own heart in the way of the Cross, and the way to the Resurrection will always be through, never around, the Cross.  

We also find each other at the foot of the Cross.   We are bound one to another in our “human-ness.”  Though our roads may look a bit different, we are all in the same boat.  We’re not so different from each other… we’re all utterly human and vulnerable to the storms that rage around us.   But that’s a different post…

His way also reveals the ‘other side.’  The joy that comes on Easter morning.  There is a promise, a living Hope, set before us in that Day.  Though we die a thousand deaths, death has forever lost its sting.   Oh glorious Day… how I long for the rising of the Son and the end of this long night.  But the darkest hour comes just before the dawn.  The way from Palm Sunday to Easter is the way of suffering.

And so, it came in a dream – the answer to my reachings for the Lord in the midst of this crazy hard season.  One night last week, I had a dream where I was in this desert and it was pitch black.   I was laying with my face in the dirt (appropriately).  And as I laid there, I started to hear the sound of these deep African drums and dark wind instruments.  The music got louder and louder and I heard what sounded like a children’s choir singing “dance, dance, dancing in the dirge” until their voices seemed to lift me out of the dirt onto my feet.  And just as I took my first step into a dance, I woke up.   I woke up with a new understanding…

Somewhere in this rubble and mass of stone, there lives a dancer.  Though right now, it is hard to see… maybe no one knows except the Sculptor that she’s even there… but what He sees is all that matters.   The path toward freedom comes as I surrender myself to the Hands of the Master.   I have before me this incredible invitation to travel with Him through the way of Love that I would not miss its heights and depths.   And what I am discovering is that the Dancer dances even now.  Here in the midst of mourning is where I find my first steps… it is here in the dirge that I am learning the foundations of the dance as I surrender to His perfect leadership in each movement and with every breath.

Yet I must confess that even as I took my first steps, I found myself asking Him with fear in my heart… are You sure this is the way??

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  (2 Cor 12:9-10)