| Relief for a Broken Heart © Betty Sue Eaton |
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| A Christian Grief Ministry |
Life After Loss |
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| Have you ever watched a baby take its first hesitant steps? Notice how its eyes are intensely focused on your own as though the mere fact that you are watching is allowing them to walk! They reach for the strong hands of an adult as if by doing so they will be able to stand alone and move away from you ~ to go on with their accomplishment: Walking alone! When we retire for the evening to our bed for a good night’s sleep, do we question the weatherman on television to see if the sun is scheduled to rise again tomorrow? That’s a silly question! Of course, we don’t do that; we trust implicitly that the sun WILL rise and life will proceed as it normally does. And it follows that if the sun rises in the morning as usual, it will progress through the day in its arc and set as usual as well. We trust in those facts! We do not have to question or research past history to be sure it will be so. We just know because history has taught us it is true! When we have a death in our family that knocks us off our stride and breaks our hearts, we feel that our world has stopped turning; our sun has forgotten to rise or set; our steps of progress have been stopped in their tracks! We have fallen down because we forgot that we can walk alone! It is a natural thing to feel so in the event of losing a loved one and we must allow ourselves time to absorb the shock of loss, to grieve the missing family member. The process of grieving can take a long time or a short time depending on our attitude toward death and the conditions of our beloved family member leaving us. But it also depends more on our faith that God ordered our life and death even as He ordered the rising and setting of the sun every day! God’s holy word tells us that if we have faith in the amount of a tiny mustard seed, He will bring us home to live with Him in Heaven when we die. That is a very tiny amount to be measured in anything, especially faith that we depend upon to give us eternal life! But that is true: Faith alone will guarantee our lives forever after death with God Almighty, Christ, our Risen Lord and Savior, and the Holy Ghost in heaven! That’s a very big reward for having and professing faith that Christ died for our sins and our salvation! But true believers DO have that faith, and it heals broken hearts! When we are baby Christians, we also take faltering steps to stand tall and strong as mature children of God, but we also, like the baby taking its first little stumbling steps, keep our eyes fastened onto those of God through the Bible, His holy words, to take the next step in our development as Christians. And as we grow in Christ, we cease questioning that Christ died for us on the cross and was resurrected from the grave. That is what He promised us and we have faith that He is true to His word. We believe those words enough to put our lives on it! But our grief journey is hard; it’s the hardest work we will ever have to do, but with faith in Christ and God the Father, it will be far less painful and long. Faith is our sun in the morning and our sunset at night. It is what our days are made of and without it, we are just spending time on earth until we die! Faith guarantees our rest at night and the promise of another constructive day in the morning, just as we know that there will be another sunset and sunrise. You can’t hold out your hand and have someone give you a cup of faith. You can’t go to the supermarket and buy any amount of faith. You can’t inherit it from your rich Uncle or anyone else! But when you have it your life will be infinitely better! And the only way to receive faith is to confess that Jesus Christ is your on personal savior, the strong adult who has His eyes fastened upon us as we take our first faltering steps as Christians with our eyes upon Him always! Faith says God has ordered everything in the world, even death. Faith says that if we cry out to Him in times of sadness, He will hold us up and make our walk easier. Faith says “It is His will, not ours, that dictates the length of time we live and when we will be brought home to live with Him in Heaven!” Faith is the relief for broken hearts. I know it’s so because God promised! In your sadness with the death of a beloved family member, dear friend, or treasured pet, may you find the Faith that God is surely in His Heaven and you will be comforted when you ask. ~ Betty |
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