Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

My heart is not proud, Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
    I am like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child I am content.

• Psalm 131:1-2

“Our mind flies this way and that, speculating about destiny and truth, the state of our loved one, what we can believe, and how we shall manage all that lies ahead. These are questions without answers. Yet we continue to worry, like a dog worrying a bone.
“There are places and times when we need to think about all these things. But we also need to give ourselves some respite, realize that we are not responsible for the fate of even our private world, let alone for answering cosmic questions.
“Think of an infant-helpless, knowing so little, sometimes so agitated-and how at its mother’s breast that infant becomes a picture of contentment and peace. The image from the Psalmist is good for us to remember when life seems too much and we don’t know where to turn.”

• Martha W. Hickman, Healing After Loss (Devotion for 25 October)

I got this devotional from someone at the church more than a year ago.  I think the church had bought a box of the books.  In the church secretary’s office there are still a stack of a half dozen.  Someone on the prayer team asked me how I was doing and I said okay.  That was motivation for them to go to the workroom and return with the devotional.  I guess they wanted to hear something that was better than okay.

I let the little book sit near the entrance of the house for over a year before skimming through it.  Everyone is different when it comes to grief.  There are some of the ladies in the prayer team’s inner circle who still have their moments of grief.  But I went to the cemetery, not far from the house and on the way to the credit union where I do monthly banking.  I walked to her tombstone.  I took a few seconds to make sure everything was perfect.  The tombstone had been hit by something that left a paint scuff mark.  I rubbed it out with my thumb.  Then I said something out loud.

Then I walked away, saying. “Why did I do that?  You aren’t here.  You are in a better place, and you have more important things to do than to listen to me saying that I miss you.”

I got in the car and drove to my appointment.

I can do things like I am doing now, and I might feel a little grief.  But for the most part, that is past tense.  I do not think we ever get over it.  I might have something that reminds me of something I have not thought about in years and my eyes get wet.  But no sobbing.  My wife always fussed about how I did not cry, or I did it wrong when I did cry.

But reading this book was interesting.  I laughed on occasions.  I remembered the emotional roller coaster without getting on it.  And some of the things that the author discusses did not pertain to me at all.  It simply seemed like the book was a waste of time.  Whether I am okay or great, the grief seems to be behind me.

But the child that is calmed at its mother’s breast reminds me of our children, and any child for that matter.  My wife had a child that was hysterical, screaming until my wife put the child into a crib, and the child was asleep in a couple of seconds.  It was like the switch had been turned off, but the child was tired of being held and they had not gotten to the hotel yet.  And before you ask, my wife did some babysitting, and she only had our two sons.

But God can do it the easy way or the hard way.  But whether we instantly get calm or we have to ease into that calm spirit with some reassurances along the way, God has that mother’s effect on use.  We need not worry.  Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere that we have no business worrying, and once we feel His presence, we feel how idiotic we had been to be worried in the first place.  We just fall into the arms of Jesus, and everything becomes right in our little world.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.