Honest Tears

A friend of mine and I were talking about the subject of grace recently. It was fresh on my mind, having written a blog on the subject. I shared with him how I experienced grace in the death of a friend last year. He shared with me how he experienced a true moment of grace in the death of his newborn child. His eyes welled with tears while he smiled and told me how he was given the gift of being able to hold his daughter in his arms while she drew her last breath... There is something pure in the tears of honest emotion.

Everything in our nature tells us that it's contrary to the way the universe should work to experience the death of ones child. We expect our children to outlive us. That is the way. But, this is earth and life is sometimes a veil of tears. Human tears have fallen like rain in our history. Like rain, they have nourished new growth in human hearts. They may be all that preserve us sometimes.

If there is anything positive in the death of a child, anything redeeming at all, it is that it strips away everything unnecessary in life. For those with the eyes to see, it allows them to glimpse the essence of what is important in life. No ego exists in that moment; no pride; no pettiness, only the simple, pure feeling of love for a life cut short. And, while it breaks our hearts to see our children, the most innocent among us, suffer and die...we can remember that a broken heart is also an open heart. Open hearts are the hope for our race; they preserve it. In the tears of a broken heart are true moments of grace. Often it is through such tears that we can see God the most clearly. Blessed are those with a broken spirit...

My faith calls on me to open my heart. It calls on me to realize the connection that exists between all of us. My friends' tears touched my heart and it went out to him. The death of his daughter was my loss too...it was a loss to all of us. We are all family.

Never have I’ve seen it more beautifully put than in the prose of the poet John Donne: (Excerpts from: Meditation #17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris)

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Amen.