Who knew that the determination of a courtship would be so painful? That coming to the (seemingly simple) conclusion that the shell that you picked up on the seashore wasn't the best one would be so unbearable? I, naively and innocently, believed it wouldn't be either of those emotions and many more. And now that the bubble has been burst, I am amazed that people actually do this process over and over...that they actually are willing (not only that, but desiring) to put forth the effort again and again. How and why? People (and my rationale) tell me that I am just saying these things because there hasn't been enough time or healing...But just like after having moved once (no matter how long ago), the dread of moving again is enough to deter people from moving...Shouldn't this follow the same principle? Then again, the dread of moving is renewed by just a glance at all the junk you have whereas though the human mind is an amazing creation, memories, emotions, and feelings fade and are forgotten...there are exceptions (for humans are amazing at that as well) who overcome that and remind themselves daily, picking off the newly-formed scab every day to make sure the wound never heals. Those who become bitter and their heart becomes hard and impenetrable...a healing process gone wrong. And there is nobody to blame or sue for malpractice except themselves.
There is no way to make a person who is grieving and mourning feel like you understand and can sympathize. The only person who can understand and make the mourning person feel like they understand, is someone who has just gone through the process, healed and yet remembers vividly what it feels like. That's why I went searching for some tidbits (quotes, passages, etc) online of C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed (I have the book in TN but I did not bring it)...Though I cannot say that I am experiencing even half the amount and intensity of sorrow and grief that C.S. Lewis experienced when he lost his wife, but I needed someone who would understand...and I knew C.S. Lewis would. And of course, Christ understands for the "only person" I just described fits Christ quite well..however, as C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand." Christ is the truth and His suffering providing us hope is truth. However, how truth goes from truth to consolation is a harder and more difficult process to understand in times of grief. So don't give me that.
C.S. Lewis takes the feelings churning in my soul and puts them in writing...
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don't really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man's life. I was happy before I ever met H. I've plenty of what are called 'resources.' People get over these things. Come, I shan't do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory — and all this 'commonsense' vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.
On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it — that disgusts me. And even while I'm doing it I know it leads me to misrepresent H. herself. Give that mood its head and in a few minutes I shall have substituted for the real woman a mere doll to be blubbered over. Thank God the memory of her is still too strong (will it always be too strong?) to let me get away with it..."
"Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on."
"I was wrong to say the stump was recovering from the pain of the amputation. I was deceived because it has so many ways to hurt me that I discover them only one by one."
"The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed-might grow tired of this vile sport-might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kind and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't? Either way, we're for it. What do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good"? Have they never even been to a dentist?"
"What pitiable cant to say, ‘She will live forever in my memory!’ Live? That is exactly what she won’t do."
And this last one is not by C.S. Lewis...rather a random college student (I will keep the name to myself)...however, something that I would have like to write at this time to go along the lines of that last quote (above):
"Imaginations can go to hell. They're tormenting. That's what they are. The imagination is where insatiable dreams and unsatisfied desires can brew. Imagination does not create an alternate reality. No, quite the contrary, it rather creates a temporary illusion, like a dream within a night's sleep or the musings of a drunk. There always comes a time to wake, though: a hangover. It comes sooner than ever anyone wishes, and often the dream of the imagination seems to have faded almost immediately."
My imagination is my hell right now...and I am doing everything I can to stay away from it.
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