Good Grief

I've spent most of my life waiting for the next thing. It has been difficult for me to engage the season that the Lord has put me in in large part because of my chronic habit of keeping one eye on the horizon. In general terms, I think I find the weight of the present unbearable at times. Here is an example. I've been really wrestling with grief for the last few days. My grandfather died a few months ago but the realization that he is actually dead and no longer around on earth didn't seep(spelling?) all the in until Monday or Tuesday of this week. I have been at a complete loss as to what to do with it. There seems to be no amount of laughing or silence or drives or music and talks that make it go away. I don't mean the loud, vibrant grief that life brings along. No, this is a quiet, subtle, and almost gentle grief that slips into the strangest parts of my days. My friend Mike asked me today if I wanted to talk about it, and I told him I didn't think that there was really anything to talk about it. I miss my grandfather. I love him and he's gone. What else can I say? Talking about it doesn't bring him back. Writing music about him doesn't bring him back. Reading books by other people who have lost loved ones doesn't bring him back. Slipping into depression doesn't bring him back. Nothing does. Coincidentally, I wrote a song about him tonight, it's called something, I'm just not sure what yet, probably "Cover". Normally, this would be a season I would be looking to get out of as quickly as possible. It's uncomfortable, sometimes agonizing. But tonight, when I was leaving a party, I think I had a bit of a breakthrough surrounding my understanding of grief and perhaps any season that I do/will find myself in. God seems completely content to let it continue. He is in no rush to let the reality of my grandfather's faith and place in heaven seep in like it needs to. You know how there are these moments in life when something you have known for a long time suddenly makes sense and begins to affect the way you think about the world and your life? Yeah, well, that hasn't happened for me yet with the whole issue of death and suffering and grief. I know what I need to know in order for that to happen. I know that the Lord is control of all things, that He works things for our good, and that my grandfather placed his faith in him long before he died. An imperfect, but nonetheless mostly complete, string of truths that provides the backbone for any remedy for grief. But I'm not looking for a remedy right now, and God doesn't seem to be providing one. God seems to be saying "grieve". This is just another in a long line of cups I will have to drink. Jesus wasn't able to look past the cup of his suffering that night in the garden, He had to look into it. There's no getting around some things, I suppose.