Our Steering Wheel
Mar 11, 2020By Angelica Roszhart
Grief turns life upside down. Some days it’s hard just to breath. C.S. Lewis, in his book, A Grief Observed, put it quite brilliantly when he said, “For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often – will it be for always? – how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment?’ The same leg is cut off time after time.”
But I don’t have to go on describing grief; you all know what I mean, right? In this fallen world where soul-crushing things happen, no one is exempt from grief. We all grieve…in different ways, at different times, and for different reasons. But we all do it.
Since we all grieve, why do we so often seem to read another person’s grief as a “keep out” sign or “private property, no trespassing,” or possibly even a sign that reads, “danger, highly flammable”…which, if you’re anything like me when I grieve, may or may not have some truth to it. But really, why do we often shy away from another’s grief or perhaps act like it doesn’t exist, when it is the time in life we most need each other?
I’d like to consider what it could look like if we all decided to enter into someone else’s grief with them. To enter in without fear of not having the right words or not being able to “fix it,” or not having the same life experiences. God doesn’t need my words, or my solutions, or my experience. After all, sometimes – usually - there just plain aren’t words or solutions or experiences to make grief any better. God would, however, like to pour His love so fully into me, that it overflows into the lives of those around me; those who laugh and those who weep.
A dear friend and mentor of mine shows me what it looks like to enter in and allow God’s love to overflow into my grief. She hasn’t experienced the same kind of grief I am currently experiencing and yet my pain doesn’t scare her away. She sits and listens and asks and always ends our time together in prayer. I have never before met someone so eager to pray, so earnest in prayer, and so aware of her dependence on the Lord that she goes to Him with everything in prayer. Corrie Ten Boom once said “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” I have never seen prayer be such a steering wheel in someone’s life like in hers. As she prays with me, I long for this to be my steering wheel, too.
Praying together doesn’t magically take away the pain or make it all better, yet it still changes everything. It changes everything because it is an honest dialogue with the One who holds our hearts and the One who NEVER walks away in our grief. Even when the words don’t come and all we have to offer our Savior are tears, He gathers them all up and cares about them. There is healing in giving those words and those tears to the Creator of heaven and earth, our good, good Father; the One who knows it all and will one day heal it all.
Angelica Roszhart grew up in the Amazon jungle in Brazil, where her parents served as missionaries. Ever since she was a little girl she knew she, too, wanted to serve the Lord in missions. Angelica and her husband currently work in Northern Argentina, directing a day-home for children at risk. They have two, young children of their own and about 80 more whom they call “their kids.” Angelica loves her family, children, art, riding horses, being outside, and her Savior.
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