Through the Valley of Shadows, Part 4 of 4

 

Taylor Pryor on a Guatemalan mountain top

We’ve all heard the advice that “the first year is the hardest” when someone you love dies. In the case of Taylor Pryor, her parents Doug and Darseen felt so numb and exhausted from the stress of the previous year, that the second year proved harder than the first. Well-meaning people can say unhelpful things. One man who had lost a son called Doug to express sympathy. “They tell you it gets easier with time,” the man said. “But it never gets easier.”

That was not what Doug needed to hear.

Isn’t it odd how we all feel the need to say something, anything, when what people in these circumstances need most is simply a listening and sympathetic presence? For the first few weeks after Taylor’s passing, friends came every evening to just sit and listen and cry with them.

While Doug and Darseen admit it’s difficult to see Taylor’s many friends going on with their lives, it brings them comfort at the same time. When her friend Mercy threw a party on Taylor’s birthday so all her friends could come to share their memories and celebrate her life, it brought joy to their hearts. The arrival of their first grandchild, a little girl, early in 2021 also helped soothe their broken hearts and bring joy.

When I asked the Pryors whether they had any specific scriptures they cling to, Darseen told me the most significant one has been Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” For Doug, it would be the passage in Matthew 14 where Jesus invites Peter to walk on the water with him. Peter succeeds only as long as he keeps his eyes on Jesus. When he looks at the storm around him, he begins to sink.

In another Peter story, several followers have walked away from Jesus because they simply cannot understand his difficult teachings. Jesus looks at his twelve disciples and asks if they, too, will leave. Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

All this boils down to surrendering to God’s sovereignty. Like Habakkuk in the Old Testament, the Pryor family has no explanation for why God allowed such horrific things to happen. How do you continue to believe that God is both all-good and all-powerful when He did not prevent this? “I know God is going to redeem this,” Doug said.

I wish I could adequately describe for them what happens in my own heart when I hear this, or when I see Doug and Darseen continue to raise their hands in worship at church. I can’t begin to grasp the level of their pain, but I wonder if their particular brand of “rejoicing” will be their ongoing battle for improved, consistent mental health care for others. I wonder whether they will get to see for themselves how Taylor did indeed change the world for good.

If they were to compose their own paraphrase of Habakkuk 3:17-19, I wonder if it might look something like this:

“Though our precious daughter is no longer here,
Though she was unjustly treated by our health care system,
Though our hearts are broken beyond repair,
Yet we will rejoice in the Lord, our Redeemer.
The Sovereign Lord will give us strength to carry on until the day we see our beautiful Taylor’s face again, and we finally, truly understand.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available. From anywhere in Canada, call: 1-833-456-4566 (24/7). Adults can text: 741741. Youth can text: 686868. Website - www.talksuicide.ca

Let's Hear It for those THOUGHS

I am learning to love the word “though.”

Last month, I enjoyed the privilege of being guest speaker at a Christmas banquet in MacGregor. The women of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church were warm, welcoming, and responsive. They laughed in all the right places and grew quiet right on cue. And if you ever doubted the adage that Mennonite girls can cook, doubt no longer. I stuffed myself with delicious food even though I could only sample a fraction of their potluck offerings.

That night I shared with the group some of my funniest stories, but also some serious ones. We looked at a short passage from Habakkuk chapter three, clearly written to an agricultural community during a bleak time.

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength.”

Do you see all the “thoughs” in that passage? The writer is telling us we can rejoice even in the middle of hardship and pain. I encouraged the women to fill in those “thoughs” with their own “thoughs.” We all have them. Make a list, whatever yours might be. Though my marriage is broken, though I am not receiving healing from this illness, though I am still unemployed, though my loved one has an addiction…you know what yours are, and maybe the list seems extra-long. Once your list is done, add the YET part, like Habakkuk did. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

Why? Because your story isn’t over. God is in the business of great reversals. We see it all through the Bible. Think of Esther. Job. Gideon. Lazarus. But nowhere more powerfully than at the cross of Christ. What our enemy thought was his greatest victory—the Son of God, dead—turned out to be his greatest defeat. Not only did Jesus return to life, but his resurrection made a way for us all to live forever. The greatest reversal ever.

And God can do the same with your pain. Your “though.” You may not see it today or tomorrow, but one day you will tell the complete story. The ending will be so triumphant, greater than you could have ever imagined (see Ephesians 3:20).

I’ve never jumped on the bandwagon of choosing a theme word for a year, but I’m beginning to think “though” might be a great word for 2020. One day, we will have perfect twenty-twenty vision. We’ll see our lives—past, present, and future—the same way God sees them. We’ll view with clarity the great reversals he performed in our lives when we continued to worship him no matter what.

And we’ll realize the precious value of a little word like “though.”