Right There Waiting For You

 Right There Waiting For You

      Grief likes to ambush you.  What does that phrase 'grief ambush' mean?  It means that you can be doing something in the normal routine of life, something so predictable and mundane, and then out of the blue grief just tackles you or attacks you like a mugger on the street.  Grief ambushes leave you feeling vulnerable, unsure, and fearful.  Grief ambushes can be ugly, but they can also be beautiful because they remind you of something beautiful, something you probably haven't thought of in quite some time. I had a grief ambush yesterday.  I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room yesterday just watching Facebook reels.  There was a sweet black man sitting across from me singing hymns.  He had a Jesus loves me hat on.  And then a song came on.  “Right Here Waiting For You.”  It hit me before I even had time to prepare for it.

      Now, much to the surprise of some of you, I love 80's music.  I love big hair romantic ballads from the area.  The longer the hair, the sappier the music, the better.  Songs can be powerful in grief. There are songs that you hear and they’re just background noise that never catch your ear. And then there are songs that open a door you thought you had closed for the day...days...maybe a lifetime. This one opened a door straight into grief.  It was almost like someone kicked down the door.

      Instantly, I wasn’t in that waiting room anymore.  I felt like my wife went on a quick rewind to two years ago. I was back in a different season of my life sitting beside Tiffanie at the Chambersburg hospital when she was sick. I remember hearing that song while I was sitting in the waiting area on the second floor.  The waiting room is to the right of the elevator.  I just got off the phone with my dad, I was emotionally exhausted and that song came on.  It talks about a long distance relationship and how hard it could be (ironically I'm in a long distance marriage now) but automatically my mind knew that the song would be a bit prophetic in nature. 

      The song put me in a strange in-between place that I became very familiar with during Tiff's ten month cancer journey.  Living in the present but knowing that the future, a future I didn't want, was coming. Loving someone deeply while also grieving them before they’re gone. Knowing the distance was coming. Not just physical distance, but the kind you can’t bridge anymore, can't call, can't send a message too.  I sat and sobbed listening to that song.  I vividly remember thinking, How do I survive that?  And I remember telling myself things like, She’ll be in heaven. She’ll be healed. She’ll be whole. And all of that is true. But that didn't erase the ache of knowing I would still be here, and she would not.  It was so confusing looking at a person that you love so much knowing, without a doubt, that they were going to heaven.  It still, at this exact moment, brings tears to my eyes.

      When that song played yesterday, it was like my body remembered something before my mind or heart could catch up. There was that familiar tightening in my chest. That quiet, sudden grief that just shows up unasked, unwelcomed, and not wanted.  I felt my breathing labor, my heart rate rise, and I felt the tear start to form in the corner of my eye.  I didn’t cry outwardly, but I was weeping on the inside. I just sat there, still, like I was holding something fragile inside me...something so precious that I didn't want to invite anyone outside into the inner pain that I was balancing.

      Grief has a way of doing that.  It doesn’t stay in the past.  A lot of people miss that about grief.  They think that grief is past tense, but for the person who loses someone that they love deeply, grief is a part of their daily experience.  It is an inescapable emotion that waxes and wanes over time. It waits. It lingers. And sometimes it gets triggered by something as ordinary as a song in a doctor’s office, the flavor of a food, the smell of a flower, or a color clothing that someone is wearing.

      What makes it even more complicated now is that my life has moved forward in ways I never would have imagined in those early days of loss. I have fallen in love with a fantastic woman and remarried.  I'm building a totally new and different life with her.  We are blending our families together. I have a life that is full again in ways I never thought possible when everything first fell apart.  I am so incredibly blessed and excited to see what God's doing....and yet… I still carry Tiffanie with me.  That’s where the tension lives.

      People want grief to have a clean ending. A before and after. A “you move on” moment where everything fits neatly into place or a puzzle that matches the box top. But real life doesn’t work that way. Love doesn’t work that way.  Why in the world would others expect a perfect story when their lives aren't a perfect story?  Now I live in this strange space of loving someone deeply who is in heaven, and loving someone deeply who is here on earth.  I want to share something that might sound confusing, maybe even frustrating to others, those two realities don’t cancel each other out. They coincide beside each other...albeit sometimes peacefully, sometimes painfully.  Love doesn’t divide itself cleanly.  To be fair with you, real love doesn't divide.  It expands. It stretches. It holds more than we think it can.  I know for me personally falling in love didn't mean that I loved Tiffanie less.  Instead it meant that God grew the capacity of my heart to love more.

      I don't have words to rightly describe how I still miss Tiffanie.  And, it’s not just missing a person, it's missing our story, a voice that knew you in ways that no one will ever know you, a life that shaped me, and a future that we thought would have.  And yet there, in the middle of the pain, my faith anchors something deeper underneath all of that.  I don’t grieve without hope.  I believe she is not lost. I believe she is not waiting in uncertainty. I believe she is held by Christ in a way that is more real than anything I can see or touch right now.  Now that phrase “right here waiting for you” has changed in two years.  How has it changed?  Because it isn’t just about her absence anymore. It’s about a promise that God made to us through the finished work of Jesus. It’s about coming reunion. It’s about the reality that this separation is temporary, even if it can feel permanent in the moment.

      So I sat there in that waiting room yesterday, holding on to two different lives.  I had one foot in grief. One foot in grace. One part of me remembering loss. Another part of me anchored that love doesn’t end at a graveside.  In that moment I wrote a note in my phone that simply said "My love for you still remembers, my love still hopes, and my love still waits for you."  I'll always be here remembering Tiff as God graciously and patiently leads me in a new life for His glory and my good.