I’m sitting in the parking lot of the local Big Y. It’s sunset. The sky is adorned with calming hues - blues, oranges, grays. I just got off a long day at work and I passed a field on my drive home. It’s a favorite of mine. Call me weird, but I have favorite fields. One is here in the town I grew up in - Enfield. It’s on my dad’s favorite street in town. Yes, he had a favorite street. Consequently, so do I. What do you want to bet they’re one and the same?
My second favorite field is out in Denver, Colorado behind the Homewood Suites we called “home” during our family trips out there. The field faces west and, in August, is filled with thousands of sunflowers that provide the perfect foreground for a Rocky Mountain sunset. The flowers stand proudly in front of those purple mountains, their yellow petals contrasting perfectly with the fiery red sky.
My third favorite field is in East Windsor. It belongs to Stanton Equipment and is often dotted with John Deere equipment. I remember this field from my childhood. It’s across from where my grandparents on my father’s side used to live. The sight of it brings back fond memories spent with them, eating M&M’s and my Nana’s cookies, admiring my Bumpy’s train collection, and solving puzzle boxes they would always give me. I drive past that field almost daily now as I head to and from my part-time job at Banana Republic. As I passed it tonight, a gentle fog had settled over the lush green grass.
Today was a typical Connecticut summer day with high temperatures and afternoon rain, exacerbating the already present humidity, and resulting in scattered, light fog. I thought about that fog as I continued my drive back to town. You can see the beauty of the field through it, but it affects the view. Changes it.
I suppose that’s how I look at grief. Like fog. Sometimes the fog is light. You can still see the beauty of life despite its presence. It’s just a little more hazy than normal. There are times when the fog even enhances the view. After all, some of the most beautiful sceneries I’ve had the blessing of witnessing have had a light fog present and it only added to the mystique. Grief is the same way. There are moments in life, like the birth of a newborn, that are made more precious by the fact that you’ve known loss. It helps you appreciate better the beautiful blessings that God graciously bestows on us this side of glory.
There are days, though, when the fog is thick, and it’s like driving at night in quarter-mile visibility conditions. The fog is virtually all you see. It clouds your judgement. It affects your mood. It threatens to swallow you and never let go.
I’m working on [slowly] reading through Deserted by God? by Sinclair Ferguson. When explaining why he was approaching this book in the way of a Bible study, he said, “...when we are discouraged, or face difficulties, or feel that God has deserted us, our great temptation is to turn in upon ourselves. We lose our sense of perspective, our objectivity. We need to be brought out of ourselves and have our gaze redirected from what we are and do to what God is and does. This alone will provide the reorientation we all need for spiritual health.” This reorienting is something we need daily, but most especially on the days when the fog of grief is thick.
Those are the days, for me at least, when I “turn in upon [myself]”. I focus more on the pain of what happened. And as I go over each detail in my mind, I’m swallowed up more and
more by the thick fog until it’s hard for me to see the sun. Hard for me to see the Son. I need my gaze redirected to God. To who He is. To the healing He can bring. It’s okay to remember the pain. Ignoring it won’t do any good. But I need to remember more than the pain. I need to remember how God guided and supported me through the pain. I may one day write a post where I contrast the pain of the last two weeks in the hospital with my dad, with the blessings God provided during those same two weeks. It would be more for my benefit, probably, than anyone reading. Who knows? I may write it and find that the information is too personal to share. But I hope that it will result in a reorienting of my focus...a way for me to look for the ways God blessed even during the pain.