Tear Soup, A Recipe For Healing After Loss
"THERE WAS ONCE AN OLD and somewhat wise woman whom everyone called Grandy. She just suffered a big loss in her life. Pops, her husband, suffered the same loss, but in his own way. This is the story of how Grandy faced her loss by setting out to make tear soup.
For many years the custom of making tear soup had been much forgotten. As peoples' lives became more rushed they found it much easier to pull "soup in a can" from the shelf and heat it on the stove.
But several years ago Grandy got a taste of a well-seasoned tear soup. One of her friends made it from scratch after her child died.
As soon as Grandy tasted the rich flavor of that carefully made soup, she promised herself never again to assume that quicker was better."
- Excerpt from Tear Soup by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen
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The last four and a half years, we have been learning how to make tear soup. It has been a season marked by winter, hardship, loss, and grief.
And also a concept called the "sacred dance of grief and joy." I would add to that, the dances of uncertainty and peace, hope and despair, disillusionment and content, sorrow, grief and joy.
For neither of these are mutually exclusive, in fact we often experience two seemingly opposing poles at the same time. Finding that the worlds of peace and uncertainty, hope and despair, sorrow and joy, can and often do co-exist.
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I realized that a few weeks ago. That this is what has characterized the last four and a half years since we've been dealing with the loss that my chronic illness has brought into our lives. It has been a time marked by and what I'm finding is our dance right now, our song, our story, the "sacred dance of grief and joy."
It is a dance that is at times beautiful, others heartbreaking, exhausting, a dance and a tune that gets old, one that can feel unjust, unfair, at times, one that can bring a feeling of complete and total peace, the steps and the tune is often changing, through a myriad of circumstances and situations, yet the dance is one and the same.
The tune has changed quite a bit over the last few weeks. And I've found myself struck by its new intensity and presence. I wrote here at length about this new wave of grief, but also this excerpt below from Tear Soup captured much of my sentiments as well, particularly one aspect of my grief that I haven't felt ironically since the beginning of the illness I began dealing with four and a half years ago, now experiencing it at the beginning of a new illness that has worked its way into our lives.
"But eventually she ran out of things to add... (to her soup).
Grandy's arms ached and she felt stone cold and empty.
There were no words that could describe the pain she was feeling.
What's more, when she looked out the window it surprised her to see how the rest of the world was going on as usual while her world had stopped."
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This was so how I felt and so where I was at much of the previous week and a half then I wrote this, feeling that all-to familiar feeling of when I felt as if I was again viewing life from the outside. I would peer into the worlds of real life, the worlds of social media on Facebook or Instagram, the worlds of people living and going on about life all around me, and more and more felt more alone, more puzzled and more angry that my world felt as it was standing still.
But more than anything, when I wrote that "Take Heart" post and something I am still taken aback by, is by the intensity and entirely different, unique nature of this kind of grief I am and we are currently experiencing.
An entirely new layer and experience of grief, one that feels it seems to suck the air out of the room every chance it gets. Yet, a place where the healing begins.
A healing that goes not around, but through the very center of the grief and faces it square in the face, a healing that does not take place quickly or overnight, but one that will come over time, as we learn how to make a new kind of tear soup amidst a house and a kitchen filled with smells of the previous one, leftovers in the fridge and the pot of tear soup we each are still making from that first loss.
This time, while the other burners are still going, we each were handed, whether we wanted them or not, a new big shiny pot of which to make our new tear soup.
Yet, this is a process that is anything but in vain.
Just like making soup, it cannot be rushed.
It is a sacred dance, a sacred journey,
one ordained and orchestrated, led and guided by our Father.
Who alone knows what its like to have to make tear soup, and experience heartache and loss, not once, not a couple times but again and again and again.
If there is anyone who knows what it is like to feel empty, brokenhearted, forlorn, lost, heavy-hearted, sorrowful, and with a head and a heart full of tears, it is our Abba.
One who does not merely empathize with our hardships and weaknesses, yet one who enters in and is with us through the very midst of the pain. Leading us with that of an unseen hand as we follow Him through the dark, hand in hand, knowing He alone can lead us down this healing path.
He alone knows the way and alone is faithful.
No matter how bad or how hard or how scary it gets,
all that matters is He is there.
And there is never a single step of this we will ever have to walk alone.
So we step out again, into that dance, that sacred dance of grief and joy that has become our dance, our dance and the world He would have us live and reside the last four and a half years, yet a world that will not be the same world we will eventually end up in.
For He has overcome.
The Prince of Light has and will overcome this Kingdom of Darkness.
And there will be a day when sorrow, suffering, heartache, defeat, the sting of death, loss, brokenness, illnesses, will be no more.
A day that is coming, a day that is near.
When we will make tear soup no more.
And that sacred dance, our tears will be exchanged for nothing but joy. No more grief and joy. No more sorrow and joy. No more joy in the midst of the hardship and the pain and the difficult and long seasons, but pure unending joy.
A joy that comes in the morning.
When all the suffering and sadness endured on this earth will come to an end, He will wipe away every tear, and within a moment exchange it for a glory that will far surpass it all.
A day that is coming, a Day that is near.
"For He who has promised
is faithful."
