This is my daughter's urn. My mind is spinning in a thousand different directions and I have erased at least as many words trying to talk about this, her ashes. First of all, no parent ever believes they will bury a child. That is a fear too great, a pain too deep to ponder. If anyone did, they surely would decline having children all together. Secondly, I never in a million years thought anyone I loved would be cremated. Everyone I knew or loved had simply been buried. For me, cremation seemed so much more permanent than burial. I know, the logic is ridiculous. The person is dead either way, but at least with burial, the family gets one last view of the body that housed the person they loved. Ashes speak of total destruction of everything you have loved.
Recently I have been pondering this whole idea of ashes, the ashes in our lives. Losing my daughter is hands down the single most devastating event in my life. I have literal and figurative ashes if you will. However, many people are walking around with figurative ashes. They may not have endured the loss of a child, however the wound in their hearts is just as gaping.
For something to become ash, it has to be destroyed to it's most base state. Have you endured a pain like that? If you haven't, I am willing to bet at some point in your life you will. It's the nature of a broken world. And if you are like me the pain will seem unbearable. There were many days I simply wanted to curl up in the fetal position around her urn and just die too. When you feel like the walking dead, that a sign you have ashes.
Our culture is extremely good at anesthetizing us from pain. We don't do pain or mourning or grief. So many people know they are hurting but they try to pretend like the wound is not there. They try to hide the ashes or reject their very existence. Some of us stay super busy. Some of us go the positive, self-help, pull myself up from boot straps route. Some of us medicate, legally or otherwise. Some of us burn everything that reminds of us the ashes to the ground and walk away to start "a new life". Some of us lash out at everything and everybody as the cause for our pain. Some of us quit life, pull the covers over our head and refuse to participate, or quit all together breathing. There are a million different scenarios. I have tried an assortment myself. The point is we all have ashes.
Recently I had an opportunity to release some of Taylor's ashes in a place I thought she would have loved experiencing. I didn't have any big plans or tell anyone I was doing it. I just felt like it needed to be done. It just so happened that one of my friends accompanied me on this adventure. She asked if she could say a prayer as I released the ashes. I consented. What followed was her praying Psalm 126:
Restore us to our former glory!
May streams of Your refreshing flow over us,
Until our dry hearts are drenched again.
Those that sow their tears as seeds,
Will reap a harvest with joyful shouts of glee.
They may weep as they go out
Carrying their seed to sow,
But they will return with joyful laughter,
And shouting and gladness as they
Bring back armloads of blessing,
And a harvest overflowing!
All I knew in that moment was that I was definitely sowing in tears but there is a promise it will not always be so. I want to be very clear here. I am not espousing a fake it until you make it gospel. The challenge with ashes and the pain that brought them to us, is that it hurts like no other. We have to be willing to acknowledge the pain, mourn the loss, and sow in tears. By nature, we want to skip parts 1,2, and 3 and jump right to the feeling better part. Back in the day when I was young and the queen of denial a very wise woman told me, "You can only experience the highs in life to the same proportions as you have experienced the lows. If you try and keep everything copesthetic, you limit your potential for joy." We need to weep of over the ashes in our lives and mourn the loss that comes with them. We need to acknowledge what brought the ashes to us and feel the loss of no more.
What I also know is after releasing those ashes, I began to experience an overall release. This is called the divine exchange. You give God your tears, He in turn brings healing. It might be hope. It might be joy. It might be trust. You bring the ruins, He provides something more beautiful than you could have ever imagined. The very crux of the gospel as prophesied in Isaiah 53: 4-5 is this: "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our trangressions, He was bruised for our iniquities." The very broken nature of humanity is too blame. The scripture says we blamed Jesus' pain as punishment from God. We blame our pain on others, on circumstances, on God, on lack of "faith", and on and on... the list is endless. But the good news is, God doesn't care who you blame - He is willing to take our sorrow, our grief, our ashes.
He has sent (Jesus) to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives, ...
To comfort all who mourn, ...
To give them Beauty for ashes
Isaiah 61: 1,3
What I want you to understand is that this is a DIVINE exchange. There is no formula, no earning it. We release the ashes and He does the rest. It is not instantaneous necessarily or miraculous. Sometimes it just slowly happens one breath at a time. Don't beat yourself up if you are living in the ashes. Just look up. God is big and wild and untamable and He loves you more than anything. So much so that even if your ashes are the result of your own poor choices, He will meet you there. Even when the ashes were the result of something completely out of your control, He will meet you there. He loves you. He feels our brokenness. He mourns with us and He will sit with us in the ashes until we are able to receive beauty.
I was hesitant to write this post. A certain famous American has been in a lot of hot water lately for commenting that parents who were still mourning the loss of their child years later were "stuck". Please hear my heart, this is not what I am trying to say here. It's quite the opposite really. What I am saying is that no amount of anything this side of heaven will ever lift you out of the ashes permanently. Whether it is the loss of a child or a marriage or whatever. It has to be a divine exchange: beauty for ashes. Do I still cry over the loss of my daughter? Regularly. Do I still feel an ache in my heart like no other? Absolutely. However, the shift for me is that I can function now. I can engage in life instead of being on auto-pilot and hiding under the covers. This was my divine exchange. It's nothing we can do except release the "ashes" and let him Him fill our hearts and hands with something beautiful. Letting go does not imply that I am letting go of my daughter, never. My husband said a very wise thing not long after we brought her ashes home. "The way I look at it is that everything we are responsible for making is in there (her urn) and everything God is responsible for making is with Him." I can never let go of Taylor because she is something I cannot hold. She is not the ashes. The ashes are the ruins. God only wants us to exchange the desolate burned out places in our lives for something truly alive. Sometimes you may be fooled like me, and fall in love with the ashes thinking that is all you have left. You may be tempted to curl up around the ashes in your life and lay down and "die". By letting go, you are not losing anything real. You are only partnering in the divine exchange. Let Him give you beauty for ashes.
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