OBJECTS of HIS affection by Scotty Smith

Author:Scotty Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 2001-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

A G RAVE DAY

Standing over her grave, supported by Darlene, I tried to pray. “Mom, I mean, Lord …” I wanted so badly to talk to her one more time. We never got to say good-bye. That hurt so bad. As I wept, I tried again to pray. “Lord, I miss her so much. Thanks for …” That’s about all I could get out. More tears, sadness, and buried longings coming alive. But this was just the beginning of one of the most emotionally charged afternoons of my life.

Only two or three hundred yards south from where we stood, on the other side of a large praying-hands monument, Darlene’s dad is buried. We made the short walk. Phil died in July 1976, only a month after the birth of our first child, Kristin. Tragically he had taken his own life after a long fight with alcoholism and a short season of coming to faith in Christ. Darlene wept quietly as I fought feelings of guilt. I remembered how poorly I had loved her during one of the greatest crises of her life. My refusal to deal with Mom’s and Debbie’s deaths made it almost impossible for me to deal with Phil’s or to enter into Darlene’s pain. I had been, for the most part, emotionally absent during the gut-wrenching, faith-shattering grief she went through as she tried to make sense of God’s good gift of our first child and the nonsense of her dad’s suicide. The prison of my self-protection looked uglier and uglier.

Only God could have orchestrated such a moment and in, of all places, a cemetery—for everybody a place of death—for Christians a place of death and hope. Within a span of two hundred yards and ten minutes, I was confronted with my most painful and defining moment in life, my greatest failure in love, and the promises of the God of resurrection. Dare I hope? Sometimes its easier not to hope, especially if you are terrified of the possibility of more pain.

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