Grief and Gratitude, Sacrifice and Praise

It’s been a hard year full of grief upon grief. I’ve struggled to know how to begin to process it all. One thing that keeps coming up for me though is how intertwined my grief is with my gratitude. So much of the grief we have wouldn’t exist if something or someone that was greatly loved and cherished hadn’t been lost. I can’t help but also be thankful and allow that gratitude to be as healing as it can be while I grieve and allow it to root my grieving in love.

This year I started Lent already feeling worn down, heavy-hearted, and overwhelmed. I didn’t spend the time preparing and planning for Lent that I usually do. I’ve been in survival mode. I have to remind myself that that’s ok, that God knows and sees where I am and has more compassion and love for me than I can even fathom. Right now the challenge is just to allow myself to be open to God’s Love. I think in some ways that’s always the challenge at the root of my spiritual journey: to simply prepare myself to experience God’s Love in a way that transforms me more into His Image.

I’m at a humbling place right now. I see so much previously unseen weakness and immaturity in myself. I was talking recently with a dear friend, and I was telling them how frustrating it is to see what grief has brought up in me and how humbling it is. I so appreciated how they responded: “Good. Let it humble you and then move on.” I can choose to shift my eyes to God’s mercy instead of my own failings.

Lent is tiring, and I was nervous about a Lent begun feeling bone-tired already. I started Lent honestly barely even wanting to be in church at all, and then there were daily services. I love the image of the Church as a hospital for the soul, and I was thinking recently how little it matters whether or not a patient wants to be in a hospital if their survival requires that they be there. Yes, Lent was tiring, but it was tiring in the way that physical therapy or surgery is tiring: healing is exhausting. I know there’s medicine there that I need.

I love how different moments of the Liturgy feel illuminated for me during different seasons of life. This season of life, the line “sacrifice of praise” has made me want to weep every time I hear it, because right now praise does feel like a sacrifice. “Let My Prayer Arise” during Presanctified Liturgies this Lent was more meaningful than ever:

Lord, I have cried to Thee, hear me; hear the voice of my prayer when I cry to Thee. 

Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and keep the door of my lips. 

Incline not my heart to any evil thing, nor to practice wickedness. 

Let my prayer arise in Thy sight as incense; and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.