We need to find a way of keeping going in this new, unasked for, unwanted, different world.
As we do, haltingly to begin with, we discover that we too are different. Loss has changed us.
And sometimes those changes, change themselves day to day and over time, as we wade through our grief, so that we can only see the pattern clearly, looking back.
All the losses Lockdown has caused have changed many of us too. Smaller losses (for most of us) and temporary (for most of us), and so perhaps the shifts in our thinking that Lockdown has caused are also temporary. Which is tragic, if they've been good and worth holding on to. A waste of Lockdown, almost - a waste of all we've been through.
The Black Lives Matter movement too - the grief we feel as our eyes are opened to the daily injustices and discrimination, suddenly seeing the world in a different way - through other eyes.
The huge danger, that, when we ourselves are not the ones being impacted on a daily basis, any improvement in our awareness, any increased enthusiasm for justice, is also only temporary.
Nicholas Wolterstorff's book, "Lament for a son" is a thoughtful, raw and honest recording of his grief for his son, who died in a mountaineering accident. He writes, "if sympathy for the world's wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, if love for those around us is not expanded, if gratitude for what is good does not flame up, if insight is not deepened, if commitment to what is important is not strengthened, if aching for a new day is not intensified, if hope is weakened and faith diminished, if from the experience of death comes nothing good, then death has won."
How do I ensure that the changes in me are good and lasting?
I am not self-made. I've learned to look to God for my strength and my hope, knowing the He never fails to provide them. My prayer is that He will be the one shaping and transforming me in this new and different world, so that Jennifer's death, and the other losses in my life will not have won.
