Here in an edited repost from a
few years back, I’ve included words of wisdom from Eugenia Price for those who
may be dealing with grief. May you find God’s comfort.
I pulled Eugenia Price’s book, Getting Through the Night, from my bookshelf
and opened its cover―page after dog-eared page of this book is covered with ink
underlines. Well-loved and well used.
On one of two shelves in my
bookcase dedicated to those writers who have especially inspired me, her books
occupy almost a third of a shelf. Many in Georgia know her for her historical
fiction, the St. Simons Trilogy, the Georgia Trilogy, and the Savannah Trilogy.
But I have always loved her
nonfiction and am excited to find vintage signed copies. I had the privilege of
attending the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame when Eugenia Price was posthumously
inducted and was able to meet her niece. I loved telling her how much her aunt’s
work meant to me.
Price begins her book on grief with
that familiar scripture from Psalm 30:5, “Weeping may endure for a night, but
joy cometh in the morning.”
When tragedy or the finality of
death come knocking on our door, we
wonder how anyone could ever get to joy. How do grieving people get through the
night―a
night that might seem to have no end?
Price writes, “God does promise
that your night of weeping can end. He does not promise that you will be
unscarred as though you had never loved; he does not promise that you will ever
stop missing or even hurting.”
But she challenges us with this
thought, “Because of his dreams and plans for us, we can be whole again.”
Whole seems an elusive dream, but we take comfort, that it is God’s longing for us. He
has not given up on our healing and consolation. He has not abandoned us to
despair.
Of course, the ever present why
it all happened is with us.
Price, too, loved the writings of
C.S. Lewis and wrote, ”We, in our agony, struggle to pull God down to where we
are and force Him to explain that which cannot be explained. C.S. Lewis wrote:
‘Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? . . . All nonsense
questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow
square or round? Probably half the questions we ask―half our theological and
metaphysical problems―are like that.’”
The why of it all falls into
these categories, mostly unanswerable this side of heaven.
It is true the night may drag on,
but one distant day, if we allow Him to do so, there will be joy because God has promised it.
Beverly Varnado is the author of several small town romances from Anaiah Press including her latest, a Christmas novella, A Season for Everything. All are available at Amazon. A memoir, Faith in the Fashion District, from Crosslink Publishing is also available as well as her other books, Give My Love to the Chestnut Trees and Home to Currahee. She also has an Etsy Shop, Beverly Varnado Art.
To explore the web version of One Ringing Bell, please visit bev-oneringingbell.blogspot.com
Beverly Varnado copyright 2022