Love, Heidi

I walked into the store a couple weeks ago and the Easter decor made me queasy. Easter, The Resurrection, the first major holiday we will be celebrating without Heidi. How am I - are we - supposed to celebrate the Resurrection with grief standing in Heidi's place? It felt impossible. Like so many other firsts in this process that have startled, shocked, or sent me reeling, I had to allow myself time to acclimate to this new pain before its sting began to seem bearable. 

Not long after, I was sifting through my email inbox, a task I hadn't done since January. I came across an email recently re-sent to me by Kate (our younger sister), originally written to us by Heidi. I sat glued to the screen, re-reading the subject line Heidi wrote almost exactly a year ago.

She could've titled it anything, but this felt like a word for me, for now. God was not caught unaware or unprepared by January. Looking back, especially over the last couple of years, I can see His hand gently guiding me through moments that were made to strengthen and prepare my heart for this. Seeing His hand doesn't lessen the grief, nor do I believe it's meant to, but it offers much-needed consolation. 

If you're suffering, or watching those you love suffer, I think this email is also for you. (I've edited-out some personal lines. emphasis mine.)

Subject: Easter when you're still on the cross

Dear...

When I woke up this morning, I was praying for you, and in the midst of praying I was convicted by the realization that I wanted you down off of all of the crosses that life's been handing you lately because it was too uncomfortable for me to watch you up there suffering. I didn't want grace for you as much as I wanted less suffering for me. I wanted down off my cross.

And then the wave crashed over me that in praying for an end to a particular suffering or set of sufferings, so often what we're asking for, really, is for the chance to go back to doing things that are within our own capacity. To go back to being able to handle my life and the things of my life . . . myself.

By myself.

Not to have to stay at this point where God is saying through the circumstances of life, "You can't do what I am asking you to do. You can't. But I can."

But this point of our own weakness and incapacity is the heart of 2 Corinthians 12:9 - "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

In the beginning of the spiritual life, prudence is measured largely by our human limits - we're imprudent when we launch beyond those limits because it's generally not love, real love, that's launching us. It's pride, or an unchecked torrent of emotions, or something else.

But that's not where we're supposed to stay - within a prudence that is measured just by our own human limitations.

What God wants to teach us is to love beyond human prudence, beyond our own limitations - to choose to love in that terrifying, exhausting space where our natural strength gives out, and to trust that His power is made perfect in our weakness. To love from the cross - the place where unimaginable power is unleashed from absolute weakness, surrender, and apparent failure.

You can't do what He is asking you to do, but He can do it, will do it, is doing it, through you. And in His economy, even the failures, the roadblocks, the weaknesses and incapacities, surrendered to Him, are not ultimately failures but parts - integral, perfect and perfected parts - of the resurrection that He is accomplishing. In His hands, there is no such thing as failure.

I'm praying for you, and I will try to pray for what God wants for you instead of just what I want for you! I love you!

Love,

Heidi

"...instead of just what I want for you..." Oh Heidi. I want you back. But there is only ahead. Thank you for leaving pieces of your heart for us to find; pieces that point to how to love, how to suffer, and most importantly, point to Him. Pray for us.