Peter Witkowski Memos, Pain & Suffering

Anna Who Waited: How the Means of Grace Sustain the Grieving

When my dear wife stopped breathing, I instinctively and instantaneously began yearning for the wholeness that had been. Though I longed for a quick fix, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not guarantee his members two-day shipping. At times, we will have to wait weeks, months, years, and even lifetimes for God to restore and heal what has been lost. In other words to grieve well, we must learn to wait well.

Half The Story: Make Your Bed And Do the Next Thing

A few year back, Admiral H. McRaven made waves in American culture when he asserted that, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” He explained, “It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another take and another and another.” Though there exists a whole litany of reasons why someone might not make their bed first thing in the morning (for example sleeping spouses and children generally don’t appreciate being folded into sheets at 5AM), the basic idea behind the “make your bed principle” still stands. When everything is not what it should be and when we feel like quitting life, we do not need to climb Mt. Everest. We only need to do the next thing: take a shower, pick up the kids from school, or organize those pillows at the foot of the bed. Such an attitude can keep depression from spiraling into an ever-growing vortex doom which grows in size with ever failed tasks. But while the determination ‘to do the next thing’ proves essential to survival while grieving (click here for a fuller discussion of this topic), it cannot restore and sustain our aching souls as they wait for wholeness.

That Something More: Prayer and Fasting

Life comes not from our resolve but rather from our dependence upon the author of life through prayer and fasting. In Luke 2:36-37, the gospel author introduces us to the prophetess Anna. Like all young women of her day, she had entered marriage at a young age anticipating all the joys that come with having a family. But the children never came. Before she reached her eighth wedding anniversary, her husband would die. She would spend at least the next sixty years (if not more) as a widow waiting for the appearance of the Lord. How did she survive all those long years of waiting in the midst of grief? Luke relays the secret of her success writing “She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day (Lk 2:37).”

Upon the death of her husband, Anna doubled down on her faith. As Asaph before, Anna trusted that she would find answers to her grief, sorrows, and afflictions in the house of the Lord. In the words of Psalm 73:16-17 “But when I thought how to understand this it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went to the sanctuary of God.” Eternal perspective and its resulting hope comes not through relaxation, new friendships, or our contemplative walks. It comes through worship that is facilitated by the people of God in the house of God. As the author of Hebrews notes God uses liturgies, songs, sermons, and corporate prayers to stir us up “love and good works (10:24).” If we hope to make sense of our longing, our sorrow, and the goodness of God as we wait, we must enter the temple of the Lord.

And we must do so actively. Once inside the temple, Anna prayed and fasted. She deprived her body of food to represent the brokenness that she felt and to affirm that her salvation did not reside in God’s good gifts but in God revealed through Scripture. To quote Psalm 119:92, “If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” In other words, the power to keep waiting, to survive the sorrows of grief comes from the Lord through the Scriptures. Moreover, the very ability to understand and obey those scriptural promises also comes from the Lord. He must open our eyes so that we can “behold wonderous things out of” his law (Ps 119:18). Every time her stomach growled, Anna affirmed afresh Deuteronomy 8:3, which declares, “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Not only did Anna depend upon the word of God and his means of grace, but she also knew the God of the temple would act. The great king David had written in Psalm 34:6 that: “The poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles.” God had acted and saved David from his political enemies. She also knew she was not the first woman to fast and pray in the Lord’s house. Before there was a king David or a temple, Hannah the future mother of the great prophet Samuel, entered the tabernacle (a holy tent structure where the Jews worship the Lord) desperate for a child. Scripture said of her, “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.” In taking her sorrows to the Lord, Hannah shows us that those who have been overwhelmed by the waves of grief can and will find hope, relief, and encouragement in the knowledge that “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love and at night his song is with me (Ps. 42:3, 8).” Though her soul was melting away with sorrow, Hannah found contentment, hope, and eventually a son through her prayers. Likewise, Anna remained faithful to the Lord for over six decades and got to see the Christ child because she never stopped taking her concerns to the Lord who sustained her. In the words of John Flavel, “It is not your inherent strength that enables you to stand but what your receive and daily derive from Jesus (130).” To take one’s concern’s to God is more than an psychological, therapeutic exercise. It is an expression of faith in God’s goodness that in turn produces more faith, the very faith that will sustain us as we wait.

The Apostle Peter and What Not to Do

The worst thing we can do as we wait for wholeness is to trade prayer and fasting in God’s house for self-reliance. If we switch out the things of God for shopping, nights out, and vacations, we will find ourselves buddying up to the apostle Peter on the night when he betrayed Jesus three times and then descended into deep despair. As theologian D.A. Carson helpfully notes, “People do not drift towards holiness.” Or as Jesus warned Peter, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Because Peter neglected the normal means of grace, Peter found himself not at Jesus’s side as the events of the crucifixion unfolded but fleeing into the darkness of the night. Neither made beds nor vibrant faith come about through magic, well wishes, or happenstance but through intentionality.  If we neglect the means of grace, our waiting will not end in joy but in the unrelenting despair of unnecessary sorrow.

Admittedly, we can attend church, fast, and pray for all the wrong reasons. Jesus cautions us against retooling such things for personal gain, saying, “But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you (Mt 6:17-18).” But the solution to bad rhythms and misuses of God’s good gifts never proves to be the elimination of those means of grace but rather the proper usage of them. We do not abolish speech because of lies nor marriage because of sexual sin. Similarly, we should not avoid church, fasting, and prayer because we or someone else we know fasted or prayed poorly.

And when we do find ourselves reading, praying, and fasting with a cold or faithless heart, we need only to confess those sinful motives to the Lord and ask for fresh love. Grief is not a time for new inventions or indolence but rather a time for pressing into those simple and yet extraordinary means of grace that we were hopefully employing before the tragedy of death struck our hearts.

Our Hope

And we do all of this because the God who hears our prayers promises to answer our prayers precisely because we are poor and needy. One day soon, our waiting will come to an end. We will see the redemption of Jerusalem. For some of us, that answered prayer might take the form of a spouse, a child, or a new friendship. For some of us that moment will come when God reduces our desires and thereby brings them into line with his secret will for us. And for some of us, that moment may not come until we see Christ face to face. But it will come. Just assuredly as Anna saw the newly born savior and bore testimony of that joy to all who would listen, we too will soon see Jesus. And when we do, all grief and sorrow will be made well. Friends do not grow weary in your waiting. Do not neglect the means of grace. Go make your bed, but even more importantly go with Anna to the house of the lord to pray and fast. God hears our prayers!  

Peter Witkowski Pain & Suffering

Ponytails, Buns, & The Blessing of Small Mercies

Grief finds its way into even the smallest cracks. Having suffered through the bangs and large rim glasses of the 90s, my late wife longed to protect our girls from the world of bowl haircuts. Always possessing an eye for artistic design, April delighted in doing the girls up like Elsa or Belle and in sending them off to school with some new braid that she had picked up from a YouTube tutorial. One needed to only look at my girls’ hair to know that they had a mom that loved them.

Now, such glances reveal them to be some of the tiniest victims of this world’s brokenness…to be motherless. Though April longed to impart some basic hair skills to our eldest daughter, April’s final demise proved so quick and so violent and my daughter so young, that my dear bride could not teach my then kindergartener (much less her little sister) the ins and outs of braiding, brushing, and updos. At her death, April had to entrust their innocent little locks to my calloused hands. Though my little sister has done her best to educate me on the finer points of brushing and even braiding (don’t ask), I remain a rather incompetent hairdresser. Now, every knotted tangle and slightly imperfect ponytail serves a fresh reminder of what was and what is no more.

Though grief has seeped into this mundane rhythm of our lives, goodness has still managed to sprout out of this tiny manifestation of brokenness. In case you’re wondering, I do not reference my hair skills. They still serve as one of the greatest impetuses for the girl’s prayer life.

Rather with each passing day, I have seen my girls embrace the sweet, feminine resolve which so defined their mother and which so enriched our lives the last years. The girls have pushed through my world of Churchill bobbleheads and autographed football helmets and have begun to craft their own ‘ice cream buns,’ braids, and complex ponytails. This little grace which April and I feared would disappear after her death has resurfaced in the most sincere and sweetest of ways. Even in a bun, one can discover the mercies of God.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. – James 1:17

Peter Witkowski Pain & Suffering

Tabernacles, Grief, & My Greatest Hope

One of the most striking aspects of the Transfiguration narrative found in Matthew 17:1-8 is that the disciples who had friends and family below did not want to come down off the mountain. While we know Jesus, Moses and Elijah appeared to the disciples on the mountain, our language struggles to capture the true joy, goodness, and glory that three disciples experienced while in the presence of the glorified Jesus. Matthew 17:1 says that Jesus’s face “shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light.” Mark 9:3 says, “his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.” Luke says of Jesus “the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white (Lk 9:29).” Despite the limitations of our language, we can affirm that the disciples got a taste of the heavenly glory of Christ. It proved so delightful that they never wanted it to end. Thus, Peter tossed out the idea of building everybody a little house or tabernacle up there so that they would never have to leave.

Admittedly, Peter’s comment about tabernacles arose from the depths of idiocy (Mt 17:4). He failed to account for the promise of Jesus’s coming resurrection which made a way for Peter, James, and John to stand on that mountain without being consumed by God’s perfect judgement. Thus, the Father told Peter to be quiet and to listen to Jesus. But while Peter’s statement arose from a lack of theological awareness, I believe it also arose from the experiential goodness of that moment. Whatever Peter encountered on that mountain was enough to make him forget about the world beneath him.

This Sad World Below

When my dear April died, more than one friend asked me if I found solace in the fact that her death had brought an end to her suffering. In one sense, yes: I’m glad that she is no longer shivering in pain and rejoice that she is with Christ for he is a far better husband than I ever was. Even in death, God is faithful. (For a fuller discussion on the gracious nature of death click here)

But in another sense, “no.” By itself, such knowledge has often proved an inadequate antidote to the daily struggles of grief that have swirled about. Neither April nor I was longing for her release from this world but rather for her renewed health.

While April has been perfected, I still inhabit a world defined by the ethos of those confused disciples and arrogant pharisees who choose to argue the finer points of theology at the base of the mount of transfiguration and to ignore the demon-possessed child who was convulsing at their feet. In other April’s exaltation to the mountain above has not improved my status down below. I still wrestle with insecurities, failures, and limitations. And where once I could lean into my helpmate for comfort and support, I must now (in one sense) walk alone, managing laundry, meal schedules, band aide dispensing, sermon prep, and all the other things that come with being a single parent and a pastor. In short, her deliverance from trials has brought about the most trying season of my life. As J.C. Ryle noted, “We should not weep from them, but for ourselves…better are the dead in Christ than the living!”

Hope for All of us

Admittedly, my experiences are not unique to me or to widowhood. All who follow Christ will experience hardships of one kind or another. A quick survey of NT analogies reveals that God had connected the Christian life to professions such as soldiering, farming, and running – occupations that require fortitude and that offer no holidays. Similarly, Jesus’s parables talk not about ‘if’ but rather about ‘when’ the storms of life will come. In other words, to follow Christ is to embrace the sufferings of Christ and the storms of this world. While God is faithful and those who follow Christ receive all kinds of good gifts as they wait at the base of the mountain, the end goal is not a better below but heaven above. Until Christ returns, the world beneath will forever and always be marred by brokenness, sorrow, and death.

Borrowing the metaphor of sailing, the Puritan John Flavel restated the idea this way,

You are yet rolling and tossing upon a tempestuous sea, but your friend is gone into the quiet harbor; desire to be there than he were at sea with you again.

Friends, the destination, the final hope for the believer is heaven…the mountain where we tabernacle with God forever. Our hope is not so much that someone has left this world (though praise God for the hope of their salvation) but rather that we too one day will get to sail into that harbor upon the winds of grace.

In Conclusion

So back to the earlier question. I would answer, “Yes, but there is an even greater hope.” For you see, I find little comfort in reflecting upon the end of April’s suffering as I scrub fingerpaint off the couch and figure out how to parent the devious and yet very cute little culprit. In those moments, I find hope in the truth that whatever Peter, James, and John saw in-part on that mountain, I will one day live in full. Come Lord Jesus!