My husband and I sat on opposite sides of the table in uncomfortable silence. The kind of quiet that comes about when it seems there is nothing else to say, nothing left to convey, no other words to try and communicate an opposing perspective. It was as if we had been yelling at each other across a great expanse of misunderstanding and neither of us could close the gap.
It dawned on me, residing in that awkward moment of disconnect, that we were existing on separate islands. You know, like those cartoon desert islands with a single tree and a lump of sand big enough for just one.
These desert islands are surrounded by waves of emotion, built on the shifting sands of trial and circumstance. They are small, and lonely, and desperate. And the thing with desert islands is that you have to try to escape or you will die of starvation. In this case, relational starvation.
Within shouting distance of my own island are a chain of other lone isles, each with a person I love stranded on them, husband included. And even though we are all in a similar situation (hello, deserted island of grief) none of us can see past our own desperation, past how debilitating it is to be marooned by oneself.
I reason, while sitting there under the hot sun of self-pity, that surely no one can understand what I am going through, no one else is on this particular island; no one else is surrounded by the exact same water of sorrow or sand of loss. Its just me. Alone. Stuck here.
You see, grief isolates us, suffering tries to cut us off from those around us. And what do we do when it seems that everyone who would normally send us a lifeboat also needs saving?
Usually, if I start to flounder my husband is there to throw me a line; he is the first one in the water swimming over to my perspective and showing me a way to see beyond it. And vice-versa. But here we find ourselves simultaneously stranded as we grieve with our parents the loss of my dad, the terminal diagnosis of his mother + we grieve as parents for our own lost child earlier this year.
In oceans of ruin so unfathomable it takes an enormous amount of courage to say, "I can't swim all the way to your island and you can't swim all the way to mine but let's take a leap of faith and meet in the middle trusting that a sandbar will be there, just below the surface, to hold us up together."
That sandbar is Jesus. Even though I cannot see Him, even though I fear the waves that are crashing right here at the edge of my comfort zone - I trust that He is present, a shade beneath the visible.
“So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”
The undercurrent of our transitory world - bearing it up, swirling about it - is the eternal. When we step off our islands of isolation and choose to move towards someone else in their pain we are carried by the living water. It sustains us, guides us to safe haven. When we realize that instead of separate islands we are all a part of the same continent, just one thats a bit water-logged at the moment, we can find a way to connect even in the midst of grief.
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea... [it] diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. ”
Back in my kitchen, I stretched my arm across the abysmal table top and grasped my husband's hand. There were no words of wisdom left to speak, no tears left to be shed, no emotional energy to be given. Yet in those twisted up fingers - holding on for dear life - was the recognition that whatever we faced, we faced as one. The belief that in using our last bit of energy to swim towards each other God wouldn't let us drown.
And He hasn't.