An Ignorance Observed

I just finished reading "A Grief Observed" By C.S. Lewis. If you read it, you will get a glimpse of the past three years of my life. C.S. Lewis lost his wife to cancer after just a few years of marriage, and in his grief he explored his feelings and thoughts in his journal. He later published them in this book.

My wife did not die, but she did leave me. A friend told me once "Well you must have loved her in order to marry her..." The truth is, despite all of her verbal and physical abuse, I really did love her. I still do, in a different capacity. It really goes to prove the words of the great Christian philosophers, D.C Talk... "love is a verb."

Verbs are action words (please don't be intimidated by my vast knowledge of the English language here). My marriage (however short it may have been ) proves that love is the strongest of all of the verbs. Hate, Fear, they pale in comparison. No matter how many punches I took, or how much dignity I lost it was still there. So much so, that in my grief I began to despise it.

Grief is the deadliest of all nouns. Our experience (Mine and C.S. Lewis's) with grief changed our view of God. I had spent too much time proving to myself that the God of the bible was the one true God. It would have been stupid of me to go against that. Though I am a fool most of the time I do not wish to make things worse by diving willingly into foolishness. Instead I would have conversations with God (very one sided in hindsight) that went like: "God, I see how it is, you aren't who I thought you were, but I see the true you now..." "I guess you don't HAVE to be giving to love me..." and "Fine, you want me to be alone for the rest of my life... Don't expect me to like it then."

I remember one day I was setting up the wedding chapel at the church I work for. I hate wedding chapels. I have vowed to only like them one more time in my life... if that. They have a way of making me feel depressed. I was alone and down in the dumps. I was praying, almost in tears (I don't cry... I just get almost there) "God, I'm lonely, I have a crappy job, I never see my son, my ex-wife takes every chance to slander me and cast doubt my way... What do you want from me? I don't have anything else to loose! I almost want no part of this anymore! Yeah I'm your bond servant, but I feel like a slave. So I'll do what you ask, but I won't enjoy it and I won't pretend to either."

This is the point that I heard a very clear voice in my head. It said "You are a spoiled rotten brat!" The voice was right... I am.

I think the core of grief is a sense of entitlement. I feel entitled to have a wife, kids, enjoyable job, respect... but I guess I'm not. There are no entitlements in the bible, unfortunately. I'll just have to learn to live with that fact.