Beyond Understanding

We gathered with loved ones to celebrate my nephew's baptism the weekend after October's General Conference.  With the prophet's and apostle's words of counsel and wisdom still fresh on our minds, there was plenty to talk about.  I had a very pleasant visit with one of the aunts from my nephew's "other side of the family." My brother-in-law, Russ, joined our discussion as he pulled up a chair and sat down next to us.  Our conversation shifted to the movie, Just Let Go, my husband and I saw the night before:
As he listened to our review, I asked, "Have you heard the story of Bishop Williams?"
He recalled, "Yeah, that's the man who lost his two kids and pregnant wife in a car accident, right?"
"Yes, and there's a Mormon Message about him that came out several years ago. His process of grief is very intriguing."
We shared our various thoughts and discussed our limited views on his experience.
Russ suggested to me, "You'd would probably enjoy reading C.S. Lewis' book, A Grief Observed."
I responded with my love for C.S. Lewis' writings and told him, "I've read a few of his books but I haven't read that one.  I'll have to check it out."
Eagerly, I went to the library that same day and picked it up.

About a week or so later, I sat next to a very sweet woman in our Stake Choir who recently became a widow.  Before Stake Conference began and the congregation started to trickle in, I asked her how she was doing.  She confided and opened up her sorrow to me.  She said that approaching each new day without Lloyd was like trying to operate life with half her body severed off.
I told her that her description sounded very much like C.S. Lewis' words when he lost his wife.
I asked if she had read A Grief Observed and explained the book to her.
"No. That sounds like a great one though.  I need to look it up."
"It is really good and it's less than 100 pages.  I'm in the middle of reading it right now."
We took our seats as the organ began to play.  The meeting was about to start.
During the various talks, I continued to think about my grieving friend.
For one of the rest hymns the choir and congregation sang, "Onward Christian Soldiers."
As we stood, I wrapped my arm around this dear woman as a gesture to encourage her onward in her battle.  I could feel that she was weary and worn.  She reciprocated with a grateful sigh and wrapped her arm around me.  Each time we sang the chorus, I envisioned her angel husband as the one holding her.  After the song was over she said with tears in her eyes, "Lloyd loved that hymn."

Her story, Bishop William's story, and C.S. Lewis' book has left me thinking very deeply.  In all of these cases, they went through a period where they begged and wished to have just one more moment with their loved one.  But it was not to be and no amount of pleading with God could bring them back.

Lewis mourned, "Suppose that the earthly lives she and I shared for a few years are in reality only the basis for, or prelude to, or earthly appearance of two unimaginable, supercosmic, and eternal somethings.  Those somethings could be pictured as spheres or globes.  Where the plane of Nature cuts through them - that is, in earthly life- they appear as two circles (circles are slices of spheres).   Two circles that touched.  But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for.  You tell me, 'she goes on.' But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back.  Be a circle touching my circle on the plane of Nature.  But I know this is impossible.  I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get."

He goes on to describe the cruelty of God and his feelings of complete abandonment.   I was surprised to see the testimony of one so great as Lewis shaken to the very core.  He spent so much time preaching the word and wrote the most beautiful sermons on faith but he admitted when faced with this trial,  all his instruction was much easier said than done.

In his agony something beautiful began to happen though, and he gained some valuable insight.  He began to discover himself to see his own heart in a different light.  He reflected,"Only torture will bring out the truth.  Only under torture does he discover it himself." 

I found his thoughts about petitioning God very interesting:
  "You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.  You can't, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately:  anyway, you can't get the best out of it.... I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted.  Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face:  The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it:  you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs.  Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.'  But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac?  And there's also 'To him that hath shall be given.'  After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give.  Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity."

This description of panic and trepidation sound like an immobilizing fear to me.  How can we expect to exercise our faith and hold the outstretched hand of God when our fists are clenched so anxiously tight?  Like he said, "You must have a capacity to receive, or even Omnipotence can't give." 

 It seems as though the surrender doesn't come at once for anybody but rather through a process of time.  It's a constant struggle of letting go day after day, after day, like learning to walk again after having half your limbs severed.... all the while the battle cry sings out, "Onward Christian Soldier!"

There is beauty in surrender, a peace and rest that come to one's soul in the relinquishment of our will and trusting that God sees the bigger picture. Through it all we might ask a thousand questions.
And it may be with us as it was for C.S. Lewis "When I lay these questions before God I get no answer.  But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door.  It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.  As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.'"

Maybe that's how we let go?... when we stop trying so hard to understand it all, to have every single question answered.  to embrace the  "peace of God, which passeth all understanding," peace that goes beyond what is explained, to trust as Browning said, "God is in His heaven, all's right with the world."  This "shall keep [hold together] our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."- Philippians 4:7

-Alicia