Sorrow is a heavy thing.  Going through the necessary motions of the day, I have felt as though I'm slogging through knee deep mud.  I have felt that way because I have been.

 

 

What a week.  A childhood friend dropping dead in Walmart.  Two different friends' diagnosis of particularly vicious cancers.  Desperate prayer requests coming in from others I love for various heartbreaking reasons.  And then the gut-wrenching call from one close to me sobbing out the news of the unexpected loss of her son.  Twenty-four years old and he didn't wake up.

 

I fell on the floor.

 

Grief will do that.

 

Yet as crazy as it sounds, as I write that, I am smiling.  Because I did not and will not stay down.  Because though death will knock me down,  I belong to the Resurrected One who knocked death down.  Dealt it a death blow, as it were.

 

Still, I grieve.  And in my sorrow, my tears mingle with my God's.  As the salty waters flow, the thick mud of grief is thinned.  Lifegiving water overwhelms the weighty slough and though I am mired in muck, I will not remain mired forever. 

 

Inextinguishable.  Undefeatable.  Victorious.  That's what we are in Christ.  Jesus led the way.  And though the Way includes sorrow, suffering, and grief, none of them get the final say.

 

Life does.  Life has.  Life will.