Love In A Time Of Covid – A man’s journey through grief, continued – #22

The last two or three weeks have opened a new chapter in this journey through grief. Almost eight months have gone by since God called Mary Helen home. I’m on the home stretch. A new normal is on the horizon. Well, maybe not…

Then I came down with a serious flu or something. Due to my hacking and coughing and sniffing, I had to stay home from some of the functions I had depended on to ease me through the lonely weeks. It became clear through testing that I had covid. That meant at least five days of isolation which stretched on to more.

In our lives together sickness was nothing new. In Pakistan I repeatedly dealt with malaria, dysentery, and other ailments. In the decades since, Mary Helen suffered from at least two concussions and the complications of pulmonary fibrosis and heart problems. But we had each other. We could share a cup of coffee. We could commiserate. We could comfort each other with the assurance that this would pass.

Then she got the diagnosis that led to the dreaded word, palliative. She suffered through a year and a half of slow deterioration until her home-going. But I could hold her hand. I could ease her into bed. I could help her dress and get to the bathroom. We still had each other.

I was unprepared for being sick while alone. The first Saturday and Sunday of that isolation I could hardly stem the tears. Four walls. No brothers to share a Bible study. No congregation in which to mingle. No family to visit. But most of all, no Mary Helen. I felt so bereft. So terribly alone.

I found myself crying out to God. Father! Lord Jesus! Blessed Spirit, comfort me! Draw near. Be to me closer than my heart. And so, I began to ponder my loneliness in the light of God’s presence. For I am not really alone. “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” As Jesus said, “I am with you always.” And of the Spirit, Jesus promised, “He will be with you always.” The Triune God is nearer than the synapses of my brain.

I don’t know why God took Mary Helen home before me. But I’m dimly aware that one of the reasons must be to clear the way for me to become more devoted to Him. To “practice the presence of God” as saints have done through the ages. For Christ came that we might live and live more abundantly. As the commandments tell us, we are to have no gods before him. We are not to make idols. Does deep love make our spouse an idol? Do we tend to depend too much on each other? Is there some reality to the thought that marriage, while a central part of God’s plan, is not meant to usurp God’s place in our lives? For “in Him we live and move and have our being.” He is closer than a blood vessel. He is the one who sustains and keeps us and will take us home to be with him forever. Marriage is not forever but eternal life is just that, eternal, for ever.

Now I know that a good marriage, a Christian marriage, is one where we draw closer to each other and to God. And I think that happened to a great extent, but in marriage we do tend to rely on each other because we are visible and have warm bodies while God is invisible and able to be perceived only by the spirit and soul. But now I have no warm hands to hold.

Okay, this is a new day. I need to allow God to remake my relationship to him. I need to pursue Him who “loved me with an everlasting love…who loved me err I knew Him.” I plead with Him to draw me deeper into his love. Make me more conscious of his presence. Make prayer my spiritual breath. Make love the blood that flows through my veins.  

But didn’t I learn this early in my Christian life? Yes and then I relearn it. And forget. I’m sure I have been circling around this truth my whole Christian life. For it’s all about love. But sometimes I’ve been distracted with service. Sometimes I’ve been busy just doing. As Jesus said to Peter, Do you love me more than these? Do you love me more than fishing? He asks me, Do you love me? Do you love me more than your condo, your car, your books, your computer. Yes, Lord you know all things. You know my love is stumbling. I focus too much on things and tasks—serving you, doing, but too little loving.

Then he asks me the most probing question of all. Do you love me more than Mary Helen? And I am silenced. I think. Probably not Lord… you know.

Sigh. I’ve got so much to learn. I thought that I was a good disciple. But I know that when all is said and done, I am but a stumbling, unprofitable servant. So, my mind goes back to John 15. He is the vine. I am a branch. Without my connection to him I have no life for without him, I can do nothing. I think the life that flows from him is love. Until love pervades all I am and do, I shrivel. The Father prunes that I might bring forth more fruit. And the fruit is love from which all the other graces of the Spirit—joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance—find their source. The genesis of all that is good is love.

Lord, I know that my loneliness is part of your work of pruning that I might embrace a new dimension of love. Lord, I know that you are not only love but holiness, justice, goodness and truth among many other aspects of your character. But as I am beginning to realize—again—your love is the subtext beneath everything in Scripture.

Even the prophets herald your love. “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV). Amazing! It’s abundantly clear in the New Testament. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” (John 3:16). “God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us” (Romans 5:8).

No wonder Paul prayed that the Ephesians would “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17-19).

I guess we will spend eternity discovering the infinite dimensions of Christ’s love, the love that led him to the cross. Snatches of hymns echo through my soul: “Love divine, all loves excelling. Joy of heaven to earth come down.” “Jesus lover of my soul. Let me to thy bosom fly, while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high! Hide me, O my Savior, hide…”

I know in my mind that your love can sustain me, and yet we need people to love. You created marriage. You gave us families—children and grandchildren. You designed friendships. You founded the church. So, Lord, help me not to shrink in my grief from the very ones who I need to help me remake my life. But most of all draw me deeper into your love.

As Eddie Askew wrote in one of his poems;

“Lord, forgive me for making the same mistakes again.

And again.

Help me to remember that when I turn to face you

I shall see your arms,

Open,

In love.

Thank you.’ (A Silence and a Shouting, Eddie Askew, 1982)