One of the hardest things for me to do is to admit that I am in over my head.
My uncle has a saying that goes something like this. "We are Pedro... P E
D R... O and we Pedros fear no trial or foe" (I made it a little child
friendly 😉).
My Mommy taught me that I can do all things through Christ that strengthen me, and my Daddy taught to never be afraid to admit my wrong and to try again (this I struggle with a lot a little).
I mean... It is a tough thing to do... Admit that you don't have it all together. I like to say I won or at the very least that I survived... I came out on top.
For the last year and a half I tried to fool myself into thinking that I have this grief thing figured out😬. I mean as a Pastor I preach at funerals, I counsel families in grief... I go for counseling myself (sometimes). So yes, I have a handle on things. Or do I? Shouldn't I? You see I have gotten good at talking about grief and accepting that it is a life process that we have to deal with and live with... BUT I have been avoiding my true journey with grief.
It is easy to talk about grieving without actually grieving💔. I have somehow managed to put my grief on hold... to my own detriment I have avoided grieving whilst talking and even helping others to grieve. This is where I need to confess. I somehow thought of myself as a super hero in grieving... WHAT A JOKE... This type of thinking is counter productive to grieving and not helpful at all.
As I mentioned before... All I have, to help me deal with life and life's mishaps and crisis is my Faith and my Theology. So here is my latest attempt at doing Theology in the context of my grieving...
Let's start with where I am at. The Psalmist say "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." This means to me that God is with me, but also that God will save me. The problem I think that existed in my thinking was my understanding of being "SAVED". I tend to think of being saved in the sense of "all things and the traces of all things bad, sad or destructive being erased". In Sunday's Gospel reading about Thomas... He insisted in wanting to see and feel Jesus' scares. He couldn't imagine a Resurrection without the scares of the Crucifixion. This makes sense to me, even though I would have preferred a "less messy" Theology. A Resurrection without the scares of the Crucifixion is fairy tale... A nice story to tell without the evidence to back it up.
Every year (and in every moment of grief) my family and I re-tell and re-live that horrible
day... but we are left with the evidence of our faith growing stronger in an
ever-present God that's ever faithful, even when we think God not to be.
So I am Wiltim Roger Roberto PEDRO. P, E, D, R ... O. We Pedro's fear no trial or foe, cause we Pedro's have faith that even though we stumble and fall our God is Faithful and True to carry us through. Yes, we get wrong sometimes but God gets it right every time.
