My story told yesterday was not complete. I cannot know the deepest thoughts which caused my grandfather to take his life while serving in the Army. Hearing the news, so many decades later, did I doubt it? Yes. Did I have anger? For sure. I struggled with unanswered questions such as, “Did he have any support?” “Did he have faith?” “Why did he choose this dark path with a wife and a four-year-old at home?” Others may also ask these questions; never knowing the answers. I do not know the mysteries my grandfather held, and I am at peace with not knowing.
God weeps with us who weep and mourn; God’s tears flow down with ours, and God’s own heart is bruised and worn from all the heavy hours of watching while the soul’s bright fire burned lower day by day, and pulse and breath and love’s desire dimmed down to ash and clay.
Through tears and sorrow, God, we share a sense of your vast grief: the weight of bearing every prayer for healing and relief, the burden of our questions why, the doubts that they engage, and as our friends and loved ones die, our hopelessness and rage.
And yet because, like us, you weep, we trust you will receive and in your tender heart will keep the ones for whom we grieve, while with your tears our hearts will taste the deep, dear core of things from which both life and death are graced by love’s renewing springs. ~ Thomas Troeger
Bread for the Journey 