Brine
A drunk driver crashed into his car. As Jerry Sittser tried to keep his mother, wife, and daughter from dying, he was also comforting his two-year old son, four year old daughter, and seven year old son, who survived the accident with him. He later wrote, "In the hours that followed the accident, the initial shock gave way to an unspeakable agony. I felt dizzy with grief's vertigo, cut off from family and friends, tormented by the loss, nauseous from the pain...All I wanted was to be dead. Only the sense of responsibility for my three surviving children and the habit of living for forty years kept me alive." The pain deepened, "It was only after those [first] forty days that my mourning became too deep for tears. So my tears turned to brine, to a bitter and burning sensation of loss that tears could no longer express."
Lamentations 3:19-33
Remember my affliction and my homeless wandering, the wormwood and the venom. My soul remembers, it cannot stop remembering, and it sinks down low within me. But this I bring back to my heart, and because of it I have hope: It is because of the Lᴏʀᴅ's steadfast love that we are not brought to nothing; his deep compassion is never exhausted. Morning by morning they are made new; how great is your faithfulness! My soul says, "The Lᴏʀᴅ is my portion; therefore I wait for him in hope." The Lᴏʀᴅ is good to the one who looks to him, to the soul that searches for him. It is good to hope in silence for deliverance from the Lᴏʀᴅ. It is good for a man to carry the yoke in the days of his youth. Let him sit alone and stay silent, for God has placed it on him. Let him press his mouth in the dust; perhaps hope remains. Let him yield his cheek to the one who strikes him, and take reproach in full measure. For the Lord does not cast off for all time. Yet even when he brings grief, he shows deep compassion, as great as the fullness of his steadfast love. For it is not from his heart that he brings suffering or grief on any human being.
When we are traumatized, we can't stop thinking about what happened to us, and how we are suffering because of it. If we could stop, we would. But we can't. Bitterness has taken over our hearts. The author of Lamentations doesn't have the energy to stay polite. He's been knocked to the ground, his mouth is filled with dust, and he is gasping for breath. But the tone shifts when he recalls a deeper memory: "This I call back to my heart." I imagine him up at dawn, after a tortured night of racing thoughts and pained moaning, and he sees the sun rise again. Seeing the streaks of orange and red cross the pale blue sky reminds him that the Lord's love is steadfast. Though the night was oppressive, the first light of day resets his heart. He describes God's character: covenantal, unbreakable love. It's like the tender love of a mother for her newborn or a father embracing his son. God sees that we suffer and grieve because of our sin, but he does not want this for us. His love is faithful: it has no beginning or end. His compassion is deep: it meets us in our darkest despair. As the poet meditates on who God is, his soul surprises him with worship: "How great is your faithfulness!" He tells God, you're all that I have. It's true. As exiles, they no longer have access to Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple, and every other concrete reminder of God's care. The loss is total. Devastating. But then he remembers: God is still with us. It's the same perspective Paul shared from jail, "my deep longing is to depart and be with Christ" (Philippians 1:23). When our circumstances are good, it's hard to know if God is our ultimate treasure. But in this passage, the goodness is repeated three times: while waiting in silence, bearing the yoke, and sitting still, even as our faces are beat and our community is shamed. In an unexpected way, this is what Jesus endured for us. He refused to bargain with Pilate, allowed the Roman soldiers to beat him, and accepted the shame of the cross. God himself has shown us what it looks like for God to be our only treasure. So we have even more reason than the poet to place our hope in God. In Lamentations, he remembers that the discipline will not last forever, that God's mercy is greater than our grief, and most intimately, that God does not wound us from his heart. And when we look at Jesus, we know that his desire to spare us from our suffering led him to suffer for us on the cross. By the time Sittser was ready to share his story, he named the book A Grace Disguised. He finishes it, "Somehow I had to believe that life would be good again when I had little reason or evidence at my disposal. There is abundant evidence now. My life is as rich as any person I know, though it took a long time to get where I am. My whole world has been transformed. It is very good, just good in a different way from what I had expected and wanted."
What's the loss you can't stop remembering?
What does it tell you about God that he loves us, even when we have nothing and no one else?
Who do you know whose mouth is pressed into the dust? What's one way you could show them God's care?
Listen to "Great is Thy Faithfulness." As the song plays, thank God for his faithfulness to you.
Source: Sittser, Jerry L. A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss (p. 26-28, 204).