One of the most perfect movie moments I’ve ever seen is near the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King when Frodo boards the ship to sail to the Gray Havens after his tearful farewell with Merry, Pippin, and most of all, Sam.That moment when he pauses and then he turns and smiles at them and his face is truly happy and he all of sudden has color in his cheeks and you realize that you hadn’t noticed how pale and sad and wan he had become and how tinged with sadness and weariness his smiles had been until right at that moment when he suddenly looks like the sweet, carefree Frodo he had been at the beginning, and you sigh as the tears are streaming and think, “Oh. He’s whole again.”
This evening I was making grilled cheese sandwiches and thinking about my mom, specifically thinking about one of the last times I saw her and how she smiled at me while I was making a grilled cheese sandwich for her when she asked for one after she came home from the hospital when we were there in January. Grief is a strange thing, how it hits at unexpected times, but tonight I got to thinking about that scene from The Lord of the Rings and how sweet that unguarded, loving smile from my mom was, and how sick she actually was then and how sick and exhausted she’d really been for a long time even though we didn't realize it and she faithfully kept on and kept on, and I thought how if I were to be able to see her today and she were to smile at me, she would be whole in a way I’ve never known her.
I know Tolkien didn't mean The Lord of the Rings to be an allegory or anything, but I think that scene and how Peter Jackson chose to portray it in the movie perfectly captures the emotions surrounding the death of the believer in Christ. There is the grief those who are left behind feel so tangibly, there is the sadness the one who is dying feels at leaving, yet there is that sense of relief and joy and wholeness in knowing they go to be with the Lord and enter into a joy that this world can only hint at. And there is also that sense of letting go and moving forward for those who now have to live with the grief of the separation from their loved one and that emptiness we feel when we miss seeing their smile, but also to live the life we still have to live and to live it in joy, even while we often ache with the missing of our loved one and are so often reminded by little things - even things as ordinary and simple as a grilled cheese sandwich.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Proverbs 14:13
“Even in laughter the heart may ache,
and the end of joy may be grief.”
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers, For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” - C.S. Lewis
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how in this fallen world how tangled and intertwined joy and grief, contentment and longing, laughing and weeping are in just about everything we do and all that we hold dear. With my mom passing into glory earlier this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the strange mingling of joy and grief. On the one hand there is the joy of knowing her, having gotten to be her daughter and have her in my life for as long as I did, and also the ache in knowing how many of the years of her life were marked by some form of suffering through which she grew mightily in her faith, but it wasn’t an easy walk. Even in death there is the grief of separation, those moments when I think, “I wish I could talk to Mom about this, I wish she could have seen or heard this, I wish I could ask what she would think about this,” but then there is the sweet joy of knowing her physical exhaustion and pain are over, her faith is sight, she is in the presence of the Lord.
Another way I’ve been pondering some of these deep thoughts is in the very nature of friendships and relationships. When you have to move as often as we do, you come face to face with the grief of goodbyes. You also come face to face with both the joys and the difficulties of new hellos. It takes time to build up the kind of closeness that breeds deep and intimate friendships. It seems that for many of my adult years I have found myself finally finding people I could grow to have that kind of friendship with, only to have to pack up and move and say goodbye before really getting the chance to let those friendships fully blossom further. It seems that most of my adult life I’ve been torn between missing people we have known, looking forward to knowing new people, and learning to plant quickly in the place where we are at the moment. I told my husband the other day, I haven’t really, truly felt like we are ‘home’ in a long time. Even when we are settled, in the backs of our minds, we know we most likely will be moving again in a few years, and though we try to plug in and form bonds and bloom where we’re planted, blooming and blossoming takes time, forming real community and trust and friendship doesn’t happen overnight.
Even when we have time, I find that real, deep friendship is a hard thing to come by. I think part of what we lost in the Fall back in Genesis is the ability to truly be open and truly vulnerable with others. Even in the best of friendships, often we are holding ourselves back, there is just something missing. This is why marriage and family are such a unique and beautiful blessing. On earth in our fallenness, marriage and family should be the relationships that come closest to being able to truly just be ourselves. This is also why brokenness in marriages and families hurt so very deeply. When the people who should be the most able to be open and vulnerable and know everything about us are a safe place, it is a glorious glimpse of some of what we lost in the fall, but when they are not a safe place, it mars the gospel picture in a really ugly and deeply painful way.
Another place where we ought to be able to find a glimpse of what is being restored for those who trust in Christ and have been joined to Him is in the Church. When people genuinely love Jesus and are seeking Him and His brilliant beauty above all else, it ought to bond them to others who also genuinely love and belong to Jesus. And I have found in all of our moving that if I’m going to find those kindred spirit kinds of friendships that I think we all desperately long for, it is within the local church families we’ve joined.
But part of the cost of living on this side of eternity is that in loving well, we are also at risk of grieving hard. When a loved one passes away, or we have to pack up and leave cherished friends or friends who would have been kindred spirits had we had more time to develop the friendship, it hurts deeply. Life is hard. There is so much wrong in the world that we long to see restored and made right. And the real hope for the believer in Christ is the knowing that He is making all things new. He is sovereign and wrong will not win. Jesus wins. He has conquered sin and death and He is where our hope finds rest, even as we live with the tension of the now and the not yet of that fulfillment on this side of eternity.
As I told a friend recently when we were expressing sadness that we hadn’t had time to know each other better, one day we will have all of eternity to develop friendships that won’t ever have to end as we worship Jesus together, no more marred by the sin that entangles us here.
Something else that feeds these thoughts is that as I see the news and how divided people are, how much we can’t trust the voices we should be able to trust, how bad things seem to be in the world, I just feel a sense of homesickness, even when we are settled somewhere. It’s not like I’m wanting to be in some specific place that I’m missing, it’s more that I just don’t feel like it’s home in the deepest sense. I think what I’m longing for is not so much a place, but a Person. I’m longing to know Christ more and to find my security and rest and HOME in Him. This desire grows the longer I walk with Him and realize that the only hope for all of these things I’m pondering about is Jesus. He is the something better which my heart yearns for. It is in Him that we can be freed from the sin and discontent and lack of ability to let go of my self-centeredness and rest in Him and be free to love others and truly enjoy the portion He has granted with all its joys and sorrows combined.
So, while we sojourn here on this side of eternity, let us seek to pursue Christ wholeheartedly, love others deeply and hold back less and less so we can give more and more of ourselves and make the best use of the time we’ve been given to share glimpses of eternity with others and moments of light in the darkness as we love well. I feel like I’m rambling a bit and not adequately saying what I’m trying to say here, but it’s a start. I’m speaking to myself. I have such a tendency to hold back, to be shy, to live like a hermit, and then complain because of the ache of loneliness that I often don’t know how to break. Whatever the circumstances, I want to see Jesus for how precious and beautiful He is, and I want to live so full of that grace that I can reach out to kindred spirits and point them to His glory and together to live the life He has given us and enjoy the portion He has for us well, to purpose to fully enjoy the joys while not hiding from the griefs, to join in fully rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep until He calls us home.
“The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning. “ - C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Revelation 21:1-8
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall here be mourning, nor crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolators, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.’”
Revelation 22:1-5
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”
