To Be Called by Name
By: Susan Deborah Schiller
Sundays are my sad days and I don't know why. As I type this tears flow freely. Grief, do you have something to share with me about Sundays?
You are mourning the loss of family and friends. All day long you think of the people who are no longer part of your life or who stay on the fringes of your life, not really wanting to be part of your life.
You are mourning the loss of your granddaughter's freedom. She is choosing to stay in the house instead of be part of life.
This deep grief is so strong I don't know how to survive it. Monday comes and I go to work and I work hard – it pushes the mourning away for a time. But on Sunday it all comes rushing back.
The pain is beyond anything I've experienced up till now. Am I creating an unhealthy environment for my granddaughter? She's falling into depression and I'm barely able to keep lifting her up.
Is there no one to help, really? I call on my family, hoping they will call her, email her, check up on her, read her blog, care about her school… but it seems like everyone's too busy.
I feel forgotten and I know she does, too. It's like it's just us two, stranded on this lonely island of grief.
Her rapist is in prison, but no one seems to see that the victims are in a sort of prison, too… damaged minds and hearts, physical bodies that are carrying too much.
I wish someone would see and pick up the phone or come over or invite us to lunch or something… That's what I wish for the most, I think… that there would be someone who would invite her or us over to their house and we could just hang out with a normal family and feel normal for a few hours.
Sundays used to be like this. Our family would meet our families at church. I always picked up people who didn't have a car. I invited strangers into my home. I tried to look out for the lonely. I visited the depressed. Sunday were always like that.
Isn't that how we're meant to live?
I'm tired of trying to explain to people how much Danielle can use a phone call…. but no one calls. How much she needs to be seen, but no one even sends a text message.
I think I understand, Grief…. people are afraid to see us, they feel uncomfortable knowing we are in such pain, so they avoid us.
It's like we have leprosy. Social leprosy.
I approached a homeschool mom who lives a few blocks away, asking if we could spend some time together, as she has one daughter my granddaughter's age. She says "yes" but she means "no". She's heavily involved in her church and so she's fine – she has her tribe.
I can see her if I go to her church, which I have done, for D's sake. But it just doesn't feel real, if we only relate to people who are inside our own church walls.
As I type this, I can't stop crying, furious tears.
Somehow Grief is telling me that it's God's tear crying through me, that it's part of His own pain I'm feeling.
The heart of Love is to look after the hurting ones, the grieving ones, the lost ones. The heart of Love is to nurse their wounds. To drop what you're doing, even, and go seek them out, draw them into Love's fold.
We are out in the cold. At least on Sundays.
At work, I am surrounded by nice people. Everyone shares jokes and pats each other on the back. We commiserate. We help each other out, but we never share our true hearts. It's an unspoken rule. But at work I can pretend I'm part of life.
But on Sundays, there is no buffer for the loneliness. So I'm crying a river of tears as I write this and there is no relief, as there normally is, when I write. I don't see any end in sight.
Where is the Love in this world? Have we grown so cold? Why don't we see beyond appearances, or hear each other's heart cry?
A stranger passed before me yesterday, looking into my eyes, and he said to me, "You must know God because you are shining so bright."
Last evening a friend sought me out because he's in a bout of depression and he tells me I always have the right words to comfort his soul.
At work a friend seeks me out, to release the grief of a sister who passed away and her own terror of death. I listen. She comes to me more and more, not even realizing I have my own story of grief. That's okay, I really don't mind.
I originally titled this a "A Mini Grief Cleanse" because I didn't think I had anything to say and I didn't expect Grief to have an answer for me. But I can't stop crying. The pent up tears are bursting as though from a broken dam, flooding this Sunday afternoon with pain.
But I do feel like the clouds are parting and the rain of tears is slowing down. For I have asked so often to feel God's own heart and have asked to be a vessel of His Love.
I believe Grief is right – that the pain I feel today, at least in part, is His own grief, that His children need to be about their Father's business of tending to the lambs who have been attacked by predators, left bleeding and dying… or who have strayed and need someone to seek them out, to carry them back into the Fold of Love.
We all need Love, especially the ones who are broken and bleeding. I think Grief is right, that most people are so afraid of people who are deeply broken and bleeding that they turn away, assuming that "someone with better qualifications, such as a therapist" will tend to the hurting ones.
Really, the best healing is Love. Just being asked to dinner or to lunch. To sit in the home of a good family for an hour or two. To feel included, needed, and wanted.
Maybe this is more of a lament…
And with this realization my tears are almost stopped. There is peace.
I will not stop looking out for the hurting ones. I will keep inviting them into my home. When I get my car, I will pick up the ones who need a ride. Because if each of us can do this, the world would be full of hope, and with hope the tide of Love will fill the whole earth.
So I keep praying, "Let me feel your heart. I want to know how You are feeling. Let me be your hands, your feet, a vessel of Your Love."
May grace and mercy flow through all of us, igniting us with passion for Love.
— Susan
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