A common theme in many of the books on grieving I have read center around time. We are all familiar with the saying “time heals all wounds”. I am pretty sure time will not heal this wound for me or any of my family. Time has helped me gain some perspective on my loss but the interesting thing about time is really about our lack of perspective about it. We as humans lack the understanding of time especially when we are young. I think this lack of understanding about time is at the crux of what causes teens to struggle and still even affects us as adults. Nothing lasts; whether it is good or bad. All things pass given enough time and if we have the wisdom to wait then anything bad in our lives will wane.
Waiting on God to answer our prayers is tough but it really is related to time and our inability to understand and be patient. They say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I have always believed this but it sounds pretty trite now considering Adam’s loss. Trite or not it is true.
Whatever we are going through in life will pass and there will always be a exit provided from the valleys in our life, even if we don’t see it or understand how it will occur. The key is to believe this and wait in hope. Romans 5:3-4 tells us “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,”. This is easier to say than to do but it is true that overcoming adversity in our lives does build character and this needs to be conveyed to our children so that when they experience adversity they know that it is temporary.
We are struggling with time. We are waiting on God to provide us with a vision of our future without our son and we cannot imagine it at this moment. We pray that God will give us hope for the future. I pray that others in despair will also understand their suffering is temporary. Joyce Meyer does a great job of capturing how this looks,”Battles are fought in our minds every day. When we begin to feel the battle is just too difficult and want to give up, we must choose to resist negative thoughts and be determined to rise above our problems. We must decide that we’re not going to quit. When we’re bombarded with doubts and fears, we must take a stand and say: “I’ll never give up! God’s on my side. He loves me, and He’s helping me! I’m going to make it!”
We will always love our son and his loss will never fade but I do have hope for myself and others that loved Adam that we will come to a point where we will smile when we remember him and just knowing we had the privilege of him in our lives will ease the pain. I also ask God to help those struggling with life especially those who lack experience and perspective to be patient and wait on God to help them overcome whatever issues they are struggling with and to not give in to despair. There will always be hope no matter what.