Standing in the Ashes

It is marvelous to see something dead come to life.  Some years ago I drove through Yellowstone and in one portion it was obvious that fires had come through a few brief years before, but it wasn’t all black—rather it was teeming with new life.  Trees rapidly rose among the ashes of their kin.  The signs were all around—life was being renewed.

It is the moments when all is black around, when the charcoaled bits of life and dreams, smolder with dim blazes—it is those moments when the heart despairs.  The whispers that all is lost, all is gone, all is dead, those whispers give bitter twists within the corridors of our hearts.  The pain seems to have no end, the tears never stop replenishing, and the stoic face we wear is showing its cracks.  We try to tell ourselves that it will be okay, that there is hope, yet reality intrudes and always with that whisper of unrelenting doom.

A woman I met recently told me a part of her story, of life with her first husband, of the pain of living with an abuser.  My mind snagged on certain points in her story like when her voice hesitated, “the beatings were bad,” and when she said, “I was homeless with a baby,” and last, she admitted, “I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was thirty-two.”  All things that made my mind sit up and take notice.  We were talking about when we have lost all, starting over with nothing.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, God does take us there during our lives.  Sometimes more than once.  I enjoy Vicki Hinze’s books, but I was surprised when I read her blog about losing everything multiple times in her life (you can read the entry here.)  For some reason, I thought people losing everything is a distant problem for the few.  Like the homeless, like the people standing on the corner.  But rock bottom is closer than most of us think.

You realize the value of things when you lose them; just as you hurt when you see dreams pass away.  Death of dreams before they had a chance to commence causes the heart to grieve for what might have been.  The heart cries—they never even had a chance!  Sometimes it is the dreams of what can never be, for a barren woman seeing her childbearing years slip past with only her heart to grieve what might have been.  It’s the living through the death of a loved one when everything within cries, ‘It’s not time!  It is too soon!’

Many dreams slip away with this heart’s cry, “But, God, the dreams, the hopes for the future, they are dying!  They aren’t even a possibility anymore!”  I can flip through my mind’s eye, and I see my dead dreams—some in the not-so-distant past.  They are ashes, they will not rise again.

There is one good thing about the process of their dying, and one good thing about my losses—I have changed.  Before, when my heart didn’t know of their impeding loss, I saw God as there, standing a few feet away.  He was my friend, the one who had done much for me.  My mind recognized Him then.

Now my heart knows Him.

He isn’t far.  My heart has snuggled close to His many times.  I don’t have the doubts of former years.  I know He is standing by my side.  He doesn’t let me cry alone.  He doesn’t stop the tears, but he doesn’t pretend they don’t exist.  His voice is a whisper in my ear—

There will be a day…

The radio spills songs of hope, words of encouragement.  Standing in the ashes, we can know He makes a way.  All is worthless, except this one truth, God is here.  He is the one who makes a way where there seems to be no way.  I do not see the way, but I do not need to see.  I merely need to believe.

The woman, who was abused, now reflects on her new husband, of two children raised and a new young child.  She is not old.  She has a new life.  She talks as someone who knows who God is.  At some point, she has seen His hand in her life.  I hear hope in her voice as she talks of having PTSD, but that she might have something to share with others who have or are escaping from an abuser’s hand.  I hope she finds a way to share her story.

Those stories of old were not much different, Moses fleeing Egypt, Jacob fleeing his father’s home for fear of his brother’s wrath, Jonah in the belly of the big fish, Joseph chained in the dungeons, Abraham leaving kith and kin.  Those stories were of losing everything.  But one thing remains.

God.

Even when we cannot remember what His promises are, we can believe that He will be faithful to fulfill them.

It is true that life goes on, but in the way of firestorms as long as there is fuel for the fire they march on, dreams morphing into new ashes.  The dust of dying dreams makes me cough, but my lungs have adjusted to the stench of death.  This is life, but I can smile, albeit grimly, because I know that HE knows.

Job’s life was changed forever.  He sat among the ashes of his life scraping his hurts with the hardness of a burnt life.  He knew that nothing would be the same.  And it was not.  Even though there was restoration, God gave him children, and riches, those things could not erase the memory of what had been.  Do you think he stopped thinking about the children he lost?  Do you think he did not think of them every day for the remainder of his life?

I think Job remembered his children.  And yet God is able to bring healing, and amid His numerous murmurs of comfort, there are promises of joy that will come when moments of mourning begin to fade.  As David said when he lost his first son by Bathsheba, “I shall go to him” (2 Samuel 12:23).  That is hope.

God’s promises march on.  To today, to tomorrow, to the day following.  He does not leave us, if anything He enables us to cling closer to Him than we ever dreamed possible—and that, my friend, is a miracle.

I admit to counting the years of my life.  I’ve done the math.  If I live an average life span, I am a few years past the middle—it is a relief to know I have fewer years to face than when I began.  A morbid train of thought?  I know.  But as Paul said, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21, italics added).  So I have judged the gain as something I rejoice at the thought of, and long for at times.  In fact, I fully expect that longing to grow.

But to live is Christ, because in living God honors us by allowing us to see something that is beyond what the mind comprehends—because He is bigger than our lives, and when we cast a look around our field of death, we see that something is happening, something that not possible…we see a stirring of the bones as Ezekiel would say (Ezekiel 37:7).

As I stand in my ashes, I can see that stirring of new life rising from the ashes.  These are not my old dreams.  These are not the old ways.  This is something new.  I thank God that He can see past my limited view because He gives new, limitless dreams.  I hug His heart close to mine as I watch.  He knows the tenderness of my bruises so He is slow in revealing the new plan, the new purpose.  Oh, I know it’s not new to Him, I suspect He had it in mind all the time, but it is new to me.  Just as I did with the old, I resolve that this new thing I will not cling to.  I’ll hold it in open hand, where He can use it as he desires.

My heart marvels, because as just as the power of His creation rises in the heart of the forest to bring renewal of life, so the power of his purposes and promises have the power to bring new life in the midst of loss.

Maybe, just maybe, losing is gaining.

On second thought…

I am sure of it.