urgency.

At the funeral, my Mom told me that my step-dad was concerned about his Dad's salvation. "The rest of his family doesn't care, but Ken knows," she whispered to me. "Maybe you could talk to him."

My parents come to me for spiritual answers sometimes. They confuse my reading in religion for wisdom in faith, and so I find myself trying to give my Mom tips on explaining relativism to her friends, and helping my Dad through problems with his church board's vision, and talking to my step-dad about what will happen to my grandpa's soul. It's a hot mess. I don't have that kind of wisdom.

All the more so on that last one. What am I supposed to say to my step-dad about this? How can I try to provide answers, or comfort, or guidance when I am so completely lost?

The idea of my grandfather in Hell makes me sick to my stomach. I can't think about it. I literally start to gag. I'm afraid sometimes that if I hold on to the thought for another moment, I will throw up all over. Yet, I'm afraid not to think about it. I'm afraid of what happens when we push those hard thoughts out of our minds. When we stop contemplating reality, do we then begin to live in our own version of reality, desensitized to the urgency of truth?

Because there is urgency.

I like to think that God gives Himself to everyone at the end in a massively-irrefutable display of power and love, such that no one could say no. Basically, that He makes an offer you can't refuse. I don't know that that's true. It's my first line of protection against discomfort with Hell.

My second line is like this: No matter how heart-broken, how sick, I might be at the prospect of a soul in hell, God is more sick. He's more heart-broken. Because He loves that person more than I could ever dream of loving him. In that, I feel a calm. I'm not sure that I entirely understand why.

Either way, I've got no answers.

I think I'll still call my step-dad.

dead dead.

I was driving the two miles from my grandparents' house to the pavement, and I broke.

My grandfather is dead. Like... dead dead. The kind of dead that doesn't talk, or move, or you know, do anything that generally signifies life. Dead.

The last five days have been a bit of a busy blur, so it wasn't until today that the whole thing came to me. It's over. What started with a phone call, and a pitch-dark drive through the Missouri hills ended this morning with a rainy drive back to Springfield, and back to my life. Now there's just the reality to deal with. The absence.

I don't have an epic set of wonderful memories with my grandfather. Sometimes, I think it's easier to process these things when you do.

I have a complicated set of memories. Like us all, my grandpa was not perfect.

I wasn't expecting to feel this way. I didn't think I'd ever be doing this--searching back through my memories for the last time I saw him, what he said to me, for the first time I met him, for the things about him I loved. As I went to tears in my car this morning, I realized that my lack of mourning over the past five days has not in fact been a lack of love. That's comforting, in a strange way.

I knew someone I loved, and he's gone now. But I knew someone I loved.

freedom in the yard

I'm not very good at mourning. Some people have a knack for it. They'll sit with you, and cry with you, and say things like, "I just can't believe it," over and over again. I, on the other hand, can believe it. Death happens. Especially to old people.

I'm not trying to be insensitive. Maybe I just mourn differently. My knack is for keeping water glasses full, and answering the phone, and making sure the deviled eggs get back into the fridge before they spoil.

Today is my grandpa's funeral.

The first time I ever knew he loved me was the last time I saw him. They live out in the country at the end of a 2-mile stretch of gravel, and before I left he and I took a four-wheeler to their "yard." After the yard, he took a turn towards the gravel. There had been storms the night before, and as we rode along, he stopped at each big branch to pull it out of the way. It took me about a mile and a half to realize he was clearing the road so I'd have an easier way back.

That's not the first time he loved me. We've always had a good relationship. I think I had a special place in his heart for being "the funny one"--he would still repeat jokes I had made to him, years later. It was just the first time I really thought about it, the first time I saw something tender.

My second knack is for turning anything back to spirituality.

I think I first saw his love then because of Christ. That trip is the first time I'd spent extended time with them since accepting Christ, and in the time that I've known Christ, my heart has gotten bigger, more expressive, less afraid of emotion, less skittish in mourning. He's not just saving me from condemnation in the after, He's saving me from a life lived in walls in the now.

How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

surprises and nonsense.

I spent yesterday with my grandmother. She lost her husband, and I lost my grandfather, and being alone together for the day before family arrived from the North was, frankly, alternately heart-breaking and then awkward.

We made phone calls. We sat with neighbors. We went to the diner and picked at a plate of cheddar bites. We looked through every family photo taken since 1939. She wandered. I texted. She cried. I held.

She began grieving immediately. I just realized I might be grieving.

Some things about her grief surprise me.

It seems to come in waves. She's okay, she's okay, she's okay, and then, suddenly, I see the panic come--she realizes it's not okay, she thinks, "It won't ever be ok again."

She wanted me in the room with her more than I expected. "To talk for me if I start crying too hard," she told me.

Some things about my own "grief" surprise me.

I want to be around people. But I don't want them to talk--not to me, anyway. When they start talking to me, it's too much, too many decisions. What will I say back? Am I supposed to say something funny, something relevant, something sympathetic?

I'm very pragmatic about his death as a personality in my life, but completely shattered over his death as a soul before God. I keep wondering at God's own brokenness over the loss of a child. Does God grieve?

That last part--that's the thing. I'm haunted by the possibility.

None of this makes any sense.

come Heaven or Hell.

My grandfather died a few hours ago. Four, to be precise.

With grandparents, you know that at some point, the call will come. I'm not trying to be morose, but everyone dies, and as the closest family member (the rest of them live 10 hours away), I knew it was coming. "Ash, he died. Can you go be with her? We're on our way."

That's actually exactly how it happened.

So I got in my car, and en route to Hancock, MO, my faith became violently real. At mile marker 104 I remembered that my grandfather does not claim Christ. In fact, he has always been fairly antagonistic towards Christianity. Then the panic hit.

But wait...

If he never accepted Christ. And he just died. Does that mean...?

Now I will tell you that no close family member or friend has died since I accepted Christ, and so I have never prayed before like I prayed tonight. I'm all up on the phone to God, like "Isn't there ANYTHING You can do?!?"

Then I'm back-pedaling. "Do I actually believe that those who have not accepted Christ's sacrifice and come to Him for life will in fact live in Hell?" I'm in my car thinking how crazy that is. Then I'm thinking that it's crazy, sure, but true in my heart, and logical in my mind.

The next moment, I'm looking at this gorgeous skyline of trees and stars in the Missouri countryside, and knowing that though I cannot bear the thought of eternal punishment for someone I love, God loves me, and He loves my grandfather, and whatever happened at the moment of passing, no one felt its impact more deeply than God. Because no one loved my grandfather more than God did. And that, come Heaven or Hell, is greatly comforting.

In the end, Christ absorbs it all, doesn't He? Our sin, our worry, our pain...

I pray that tonight, He absorbs the pain of a grieving family (and selfishly, the wonder of a questioning Christian), and turns it to His good, to His glory.