And What if it Doesn’t Get Better?

After the cataclysmic loss of my 6 year-old son, there were a few words I hated hearing:

“It gets better.”

What does that even mean? How would that even be possible?

I know it’s said with the greatest of intentions. From a place a great hope. Of promise. Of reassurance that every day of this life it won’t be so difficult to take my next breath. 

I heard it often my first year of soul-numbing grief. “Don’t worry, it will get better.” In the unbearable pain of missing Mason so much it physically hurt, it was translated to: someday you won’t miss him. Someday you won’t be as sad that he’s gone. Someday he won’t have such a major chunk of your heart. 

Honestly, it just seems impossible. And to a mother’s heart, kinda horrific to even think about. This year, and in 20 years, there will always be a painful void. Because the amount of pain is directly correlated to the amount of love. And that deep love will never go away.

I think what many were saying was, “It will get easier to live with the pain. Your body will acclimate to the shock.” 

Basically, you’ll learn how to function without one of your limbs. Or a part of your heart. 

But, it will never get better. Not until that glorious moment when I drink in my first breath of eternity and all that is wrong is made right.

It’s not that I want to cling to sadness and bitterness and despair. I’m not hoping things don’t get better. I’m just looking at the reality. Mason is gone. It will never be okay.

And you know what? It doesn’t have to be okay. 

Life doesn’t end up as the perfectly wrapped expectation we plan out. Life will have pain and loss and disappointments, some much more severe and wounding than others. 

The question is not whether or not it will get better, or fixed, or if all the bad stuff will just go away some day. 

The question is what we do with our now.

There are gifts to be found in our pain. Blessings for us, and more importantly, blessings through us. 

And even if it never gets better this side of eternity, it can still be good. It can still be rich. 

God is still faithful, whether it’s “better” for me or not.

And the now might be painful and awful, but I don’t want to always be waiting for life to be better. Or easier. Or ideal. I want to drink in what is now. And see the Lord’s beauty in it. Relish those moments he whispers his love over me. Sit with the promises of hope and redemption. Learn the deep lessons only taught by the cruel instructor of pain. 

“Better” often distracts from that. I long for heaven less when everything around me is comfortable. I forget my desperate need for God when my temporal needs seem to be satisfied. The focus on living in God’s will blurs and fades a bit when the way is easy.

I think about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the later years of their life. I wonder if they ever experienced the Lord so clearly as when they were in the midst of the blazing fire. Did they ever look back and say, “But the Lord was in that furnace. I wouldn’t mind going back there again, just to feel his presence…”

I don’t know, I certainly don’t long for heartache or pain. I’ve had enough to last a million lifetimes and I never even want to imagine burying someone precious to me again. But if you asked me when I have felt the Lord’s presence the strongest it was in a sterile hospital room on a scary Sunday in September, and in those dark and dreadful days that followed. 

With the presence of the Lord comes rich and beautiful lessons that can only be learned in those deep and dark places. 

In the words of Spurgeon, “The spade of agony digs deep trenches to hold the water of life.”

And so, I want to be less concerned with better and more present in now. And if the pain of now stays with me all the days of my life, I am confident that the presence of the Lord will sustain me and carry me through to a beautiful forever.