Is it weird to sit in a cemetery when you’re sad?

Looking around at 70 or 80 years of life where all that remains is a moss-covered stone with a few words. Mostly just a name and no accomplishments. For some, only who they were the wife of. This was maybe a grim analogy to make, but I was having a dramatically bad day. 

It was the morning after some pretty life-shaking, disheartening news – being laid off from our career and ministry after 18 years -ALL of our adult life, essentially was over without discussion. In need of solitude, I dropped the kids off at an event and too upset to drive very far, I left and pulled immediately into the walled cemetery next door.

There’s a quiet place to gain perspective on life. Cue the life and death parallels in abundance before me.

 

Overcoming those Destructive Words 

In my confusion, I felt capable of only a few thoughts – and they were hard, heavy words that blocked out all other reasoning. Words on repeat that obscured the truth. My immediate sense, as I sat down among the tombs, was that I cannot soak in these thoughts and somehow move forward. These harsh words needed to die too, to be stricken from the record. If I don’t dwell on them, maybe they won’t live. 

Words like –

• Devastated. No, that’s what you say about a house washed away from its foundation, with no pieces left behind to build with. The truth was we had plenty to build with and though blindsided, we were likely going to be okay. We had seen plenty of times when God was faithful in other’s lives.
• Heartbroken. It’s true it hurts right now but this is just a bruising, not a breaking, and we will survive. I need to stop describing myself with this word that could discredit or blind me to any good that could be happening around me.  
• Going to lose everything. I was running so far ahead of myself worrying about my kid’s college, and health and the possibility of moving that I was making myself sick. Everything seemed over and bleak and about to die that I had know for 17 years when I remembered another recent decision. – I had been filled with doubts about our homeschooling but made up my mind to make a change and had been floating with excitement ever since. That experience showed me excitement for change is possible. All might shift, but it doesn’t have to be a loss. 

 

I saw that I could keep thinking these dark thoughts and not choose to look for truth OR determine that they don’t really fit me and I don’t need to claim them as mine. My dramatic mind was clinging to words that were worse than my situation had to be. They were only keeping me in tears and from clear thinking.

Sitting there, among the tombstones, I kept thinking – If I don’t dwell on them, maybe they won’t live.  

Sitting there, I remembered that the only thing that matters is not what was written on their tombstones, but what God was writing on their hearts – did they follow through with whatever He had called them to?

Did they hear and heed those words moment by moment? Or did they embrace the death that comes through succumbing to the suffocating lies that filled their heads? The ones that keep us from hearing God’s simple moments of obedience because we are diverted and depressed by the distracting thoughts of a Liar. Are we learning to hear and do what the Father is inviting us into each moment? Why is this simple lesson so hard to grasp among the living?

 

How do we do this? No, really, I am asking. I want to know how. 

By reading God’s Word to know what His kind of work was?

By asking Him to see opportunities for that kind of work around us?

By learning to hear those promptings to be about His work and responding to them more often than not?

 

In the moment, I felt drained of hopefulness but started with the simplest of questions –

 

Father, what are You doing here?

 

I got the strange sense that He was shining me. Not polishing, but shining me to begin to burn even brighter as who I am, freed from any one role. 

Then I saw an image of my husband sharpening his sword in a way that pleased the Lord; that God was preparing him for a new work but it was nothing too heavy for him.

 

Though obviously not an answer like, Apply here or Move here, we’re finding that is not the most important part of the years we are given, wherever we spend those days. Our purpose, ministry and career were about to be re-defined, but was not in where we work or serve, but in how we listen and respond, wherever we are each day. 

I felt freed from thinking this had to happen in one location, platform or way. I was too tied to that notion before. Thank you lay-off. I know soon I will be thankful for you in our new shiny and sharpened place.

 

Moving forward

I stood up, left those words of death behind, and drove away feeling more alive.   

Sometimes when the rug is pulled out from under you, it doesn’t have to result in devastation. Sometimes you find there is another rug underneath. But that hope began with forsaking the words the enemy wanted me to internally repeat so that I might begin instead to hear what the Father was really doing. And it will be the continuation of the good work we are already a part of, even if under another title or location. How ironic He lead me this way the week after I learned to let go of control. 

 

This situation is not unlike the daily battle we are in to “take captive our thoughts to the obedience of Christ.” We, as parents, can begin this inner work and then set this example for our kids. They will have this battle too because we all have the same enemy. He springs the worst words to describe our situation upon us and then hits the Repeat button – unless we do something about it. Thankfully we have the same Savior who wants to rescue us from our worst of thoughts and give us hope when we seek His re-setting truth. And sometimes we need our hour in the cemetery in order to hear it.  

 

How?

What is a step we can take to know what Jesus did that was the Father’s will?

 

I started reading through the Gospels and listing out every situation and how Jesus responded. Do you imagine it is like the Father whispering in the Son’s ear when to heal or what to say? When to stay and when to leave?

This will be my mental bank of what Jesus did do as I lean into hear the Father’s whisper about what I should do in a similar situation. I will learn from His tireless compassion and patience from those that are following Him. I will ask God if I have the authority to heal or cast out spirits or lead others to repentance. And I believe discernment will grow in what words are from the Lord or from the enemy – which ones should live and which ones should die. Perhaps this clarity will lead to more opportunities and openness for obedience. I do know, in this life, it’s worth the time to learn to hear the Father’s voice.  

 

Do you have a testimony of disappointment and change that led to something better? Would you encourage us by sharing it below?