Courage to Fall Down

I'm reading a novel called The Winter Garden about a woman named Meredith in her 40's.  In the midst of a cold relationship with her mom and a distant season with her husband Jeff, her father dies.  The first half of the book walks us through how she processes that loss.  

Unfortunately, Meredith doesn't grieve well.  Instead of letting the pain and sadness flow through her, she dams it up by running to productivity as a distraction.  When Jeff leans in to comfort her, she brushes him aside (this was agonizing to read since my husband is named Jeff too) and cleans the house.  When she feels the waves of sadness approaching, she frantically finds something new to fix and organize.  Dishes, running the family business, packing, running--all these chores are her safe haven from grief.

This goes on for months and Meredith is still completely blind to how she's refusing to grieve.  Things have gotten worse.  After being ignored and rejected for over 6 months, Jeff separates from her and stays somewhere else.  Before he leaves, he asks her one last time, "Do you even love me anymore?" and she brushes him away again with a newfound coldness.  She becomes a sort of terror to be around.  Her lens has darkened and now it seems that no one is doing enough for her.  She resents her family and coworkers for leaving so much to be fixed and an unending amount of work to go behind and do.  But her mind is really playing a trick on her because she desperately needs the work.  Whenever it ends, that's when the sadness comes that she can't give into.

Thinking about this makes me cringe inside with nausea.  It all started for her when she chose to run away instead of to fall down with courage and let the sadness wash through her.  And the more often she chose to run, the blinder and colder and more cowardly she became.

I see a seed of this tendency to run to productivity in my heart too.

Last night after dinner, my wonderful husband and I were talking about something that was starting to get really hard for me to hear and I was starting to cry.  After a pitifully short time, I gave into the urge that being so close to this conversation and holding his hand was too stifling.  Then my heart was relieved to remember that there were dishes that needed to be done.  "Getting work done and serving like that would make me feel better about myself" I thought.  So away I went right in the middle of the tough conversation, surely leaving Jeff really confused.  But the Lord is so good to me.  When I got on the second dish, the Lord or the memory of the nausea from that book came back to me and I heard a whisper that I was being a coward.  I needed to have the courage to fall down.

So I came back to where my man was and pretty much immediately started crying in that way where you just hate having other people around.  But the Lord used it!  He shined His light into that conversation in a new way from that point on, and inspired both of us with great ideas.  The Lord didn't leave me fallen down--He helped me back up to my feet.  Now I don't have this giant pressure I'm holding back.  He helped the sadness to wash through me and now it's out of me.

I want to scream inside thinking through what could happen in my life were I to let that seed of cowardice grow up in me.  This is why I need the Lord not every hour, but every moment.

Thank You for how You're helping me, Lord.  Please don't ever stop.