Joy in Mourning

April 21, 2020

“Today was the first day since Kalea passed that I’ve woken up… happy.

No reason why— I was just happy.

Twenty-four mornings between her death & the first glimmer of happiness.

…So strange that happiness can exist in me right now.

So strange and so beautiful.”

I was reading my journal today and came across this entry. I remember that morning clearly. It was the first morning since her death that the awful reality and trauma didn’t immediately flood my mind and crush my chest the second I opened my eyes. It was the first time in twenty-four consecutive days of the darkest, blackest grief that I felt a moment of reprieve. It was so unexpected— so instantly freeing— a precious gift.

A similar experience happened again this morning. David had to go into work early before I was awake. Before leaving, he bent down and kissed me, gently waking me to say goodbye. For a tiny moment in between my dreaming and waking, a flood of euphoria and energy shot through my body. A loud, excited thought raced across my mind—

“WE ARE DOING THIS!”

I didn’t even know what it meant or why I felt it. But the words stayed with me all day. It was another gift. A reprieve from the heaviness of August— a reminder that we are doing this, that day by day, we’re still here. We are living after losing a child. Our marriage is somehow thriving— there is love and tenderness here. David is out working and providing for our family, and I’m home with Payson, and somehow things are working out— this is still the life we wanted— we are doing this.

I was listening to the Joyful Morning podcast (a podcast about infant loss and miscarriage) today and it discussed the same thing— how sometimes the strangest and most unexpected part of grieving is that there is still happiness there. That you can (and will) laugh again. That joy exists in grief. And yet, the first time you catch yourself laughing or recognize feelings of happiness after loss feels bewildering and a little like betrayal. How can I be happy when everything about this is so irreparable and wrong?

For those first twenty-four days after she died, I truly felt that I would never feel happiness again— that it would happen around me— but never within me, and never to me. And to be honest there still are times (and will be for the rest of my life) when the gloom and agony of her loss overcomes me and I still feel that way— and yet the grief always ends eventually and happiness does come back even for just brief moments of reprieve.

I’ve thought a lot about Psalm 30 verse 5, “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

Is it that joy comes in the morning, or that joy comes in the mourning?

My great-grandfather Neil knew something about joy in mourning. When we was forty years old, he was in a terrible car accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. A lifetime farmer— he lost his career, his farm, and the life he knew. A family member recently reached out to me and sent me a passage from his journal. He writes:

My great grandfather Neil with my great grandma Dorthy.

"Well I finally got discharged from the hospital last Thursday, I don't know if I did the right thing or not but I just got to the point where I felt like I could hardly bear another day in there... 14 long months now I have been in a hospital and… they have been very very long. Sometimes I wondered if the day would ever come when I could leave and if I was still even in my right mind? 

I have stared at those old blank ceilings for so long that I thought that I must be in another world. Sometimes I would wake up at night and think to myself “Surely this can't be me, this must all be a dream,” and then I would try to move my legs or turn over and would come to the full realization that it was me and now all this was for real. That was the hardest part of this all. I'm not ashamed to admit that a few tears have come as hard as I tried to hold them back. I do cry. So I just close my eyes and try to forget and say a silent prayer to God and hope that tomorrow things will be just a little bit better...

…You know there is a saying I used to think quite silly but I really think it is true now. "The best things in life are free.” I would give all I own (or ever hope to own) just to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of life again.  

To be able to take my sweet wife in my arms and just wander down some quiet road and tell her just how much I love her, or to romp and wrestle and help my little boys make some kind of go-kart, or go to a dance and waltz my lovely teenage daughters around the floor and …catch again [the] enthusiasm and vigor [they have] for life.

Or to be able to get up before the sun rises and wander again around my corn and hay fields and smell the freshness that only comes from growing things and see the first rays of the sun break through the dew— like a million jewels hanging onto the leafs— it leaves you feeling like you have just visited a magic fairy land. 

Yes, I know now that truly the best things in life are free... but somehow most of us don't realize it until we don't have it anymore. I'm so grateful to the Lord that he has preserved in my memory these things so that I can reflect back on them for eternity and remember His goodness and love, and that His hands are in all things." 

I don’t know how to adequately follow up what he wrote— it stands for itself.

There was a man who suffered much and lost much, and yet, had more gratitude for the Lord and saw more beauty in the world because of it. He knew something of the joy that comes in mourning. It’s this idea of creative constraint in motion— that limitations and boundaries only make for a better end project. We talk about this concept a lot in graphic design because graphic designers (an artistic wildly creative bunch) naturally balk against restrictions on their creativity. Limitations not friends. And yet, when we work within those constraints, the project comes out so much better than it would have without the limitations. So when the end project is ourselves— and God is the designer— than it should come as no surprise that there will be all manner of cutting and snipping and cropping and unfairly imposed limitations and painful revisions until we are down to His exact specifications.

In my times of bitter grief I’ve often questioned why they called God’s plan “The Plan of Happiness” because my personal experience is that it is infinitely more painful and miserable than happy— but what I’m learning is that pain and grief are not static. They ebb and flow and so do joy and happiness. In exact proportion to the level of distress and grief I feel, the joy sweetens and deepens and I am blessed with new understanding. And here’s the biggest thing I’m learning— if I wait— joy will come, in the morning even within my mourning.

There’s a line from a popular christian song right now called “The Blessing” that hits home for me every single time. It says “In your weeping, and rejoicing, He is for you, He is for you.”

I know that is true. I have felt Him in my weeping and rejoicing, but perhaps even more so in my weeping. I have felt His out-of-place joy and happiness rest on me like a gift when I least expected it (and could not feel it on my own) in my grieving. It didn’t have to be my own happiness— it was His.

We talk a lot about feeling peace and peace being a gift (and evidence) of the spirit— but Galatians 5: 22-23 lists love, joy, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance in addition to just feelings of peace. How often do we think that happiness (or better yet— joy) is something we have to create on our own and fail to recognize that it is actually one of the many gifts of the spirit? It doesn’t come from us at all— it comes from God.

However it looks right now— you’re doing this. Even in your deepest sorrow and distress— when things are at their worst— joy will come. Wait for the morning.