But God listens and feels with us

Psalm 27:8 My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”

Yesterday a strong wind blew most of the leaves from the trees. Those that are left are fading from their autumnal glory. And with them, my heart recalls the fading of a life precious to me, my daughter Karis’s.

Thirteen years ago, when we flipped the calendar to November, Karis was excited. Several months before, doctors had told her the trajectory of her kidney failure probably gave her until Thanksgiving to live. She was so exhausted from the unrelenting pain and daily struggles of her life that she longed to go Home. She often wrote in her journal that year, “Father, please take me Home.” Thanksgiving seemed to her the perfect time to celebrate in Heaven all God had done for her.

But Thanksgiving came and went, and Karis was still with us. Her disappointment took her into deep depression. How God met her there, just before Christmas, is another story.

In the shades of melancholy that hover for me in the blowing leaves, I hear the Lord say, “Come and talk with me.” And when I do, he listens. He doesn’t try to cheer me up. He doesn’t judge me for not “getting over this” more quickly (“My goodness, it’s been thirteen years! What’s wrong with you?!)”. Even from his vantage point of seeing the whole story, he doesn’t say, as I heard a well-meaning friend tell a family member of a dearly loved departed one at her funeral last weekend, “Oh, but she’s happy now in Heaven and you’ll see her again soon.”

He listens. He embraces me in the feelings of the present moment, while the wind sends heaps of brown leaves scuttling down the street. And the very fact of being heard where I am lifts the weight of sadness so that I can remember joy, without anyone trying to take me there.

We are earthly creatures, bound by time and space, by physical sensations elicited from memories triggered by earthly events. Our Lord, who became flesh and walked on this earth, who wept with Mary and Martha at their brother’s tomb even though he knew he would restore Lazarus to them, understands this from his own experience as the Son of Man.

And he invites you today also: “Come, talk with me.”

It was necessary for the Son to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters. … Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested. Hebrews 2:17-18