I painted this series in a season of a loss that was more profound, uprooting, soul-carving, agonizing than would ever make sense to a person not in the situation, so I’m not going to bother about the specifics. But the making of the art was possibly the most important turning point in my creative journey so far. I had to paint because it was all I could do with the pathos. And in so doing during a season of deeper gut-wrenching experience than I have yet known, I tapped into a deeper well of creativity than I had yet drawn from. I can tell a big difference between my art before and after the loss. There’s a soul in it now that wasn’t there before. It was the most important thing that has ever happened to my art.
I’ve kept it to myself because it’s so personal and sacred. But what’s the point of sharing any of my art at all if I’m leaving out the really soulful stuff?
I’ve decided to simply leave the series here on my website without announcing it, without putting anything on social media where its arrival would be too noticed. Even though it means omitting the most poignant pieces, I am leaving out the most personal from this collection. Maybe someday I’ll add them, but not now.
For now, I am simply convicted that grief is a power of love that is not given the space to be honestly and rawly and unhurriedly tapped. That’s a tragedy because without the cross there is no resurrection. Without grief there is no healing—a healing which leaves all the room you can imagine to keep holding love for your lost loved one. And it is in the very pangs of grief that love is so soulfully inhabited. And that makes us more human, leaving us better off than we would have been without the loss, and with richer and more beautiful hearts. It makes us more like Jesus. It helps us understand his heart and gives us hearts that are more able to love like he loves.
I felt like a rebel living as deeply and fully into my grief as I needed to. Because genuine grief has never been modeled for me, and grievers are surrounded by voices saying to heal before healing naturally happens, and even well meaning people are quick to put bandaids on in their assaulting sense of helplessness in the face of your storm. People are afraid of you when you most need support. I personally had to discover grief by listening to the cries of my heart, and being held by the cherished couple people who didn’t weary of my storm. Painting was one of the only things that kept the storm bearable. It transformed it from a killing force to a life giving surge of energy. Perhaps these little pieces will help someone to just an echo of a degree to which they helped me to paint.
At this point a transition began. I was in a space commemorating an anniversary of an important moment in my life, a moment which wasn’t about the person but was shared with the person. It was a moment in which God had done a great work in me. I went back to the place to pray in thanksgiving for the ways he had blessed me. The night of the original blessing, it was dark. As I sat on the couch and prayed in all that had continued to grow out of that place of blessing, I was moved by how the effects of that blessing were still growing in me. The gifts, including the gift of the person in my life, still lived in my heart and were still creating me. I was struck by the light where it had been dark before. The blessings weren’t memories. They were alive, and would continue to live in me as long as I had life.
The empty space on the left of the painting is where the person was in the moment of the gift being given. Now there was an absence, but the absence was not an empty void. It was filled with love and blessing to keep living off of.
As the dust in my heart began to settle, as the raging of the agony quieted to a softer volume, I became more aware of the space in my heart that had been carved out by the loss and the grief. I felt invited by the Holy Spirit to sit in it and let my love for the person fill the space.
I sang in a concert in which one of the pieces was Mary’s words to the angel Gabriel, “Let it be done to me.” I lived the music saying, let it be done to me, let this space being carved out in my heart be done to me. Fiat mihi. I knew it was important.
Advent came, a time when the context of my time with Jesus took on new form. I had an image the first Sunday of a tree being uprooted from the soil. I knew the tree was the person I was grieving, and my heart was the soul. It was an enormous tree (too big for the painting to capture).
When a tree of that size is ripped out of the ground, a lot of upheaval happens. Not only is the soil now without a profoundly substantial presence that has been close, intimately connected, and had its roots entwined deep into endless recesses of the soil with the ever-spreading intricacies of its root system, but the soil also now has a huge cavity in it where once there was life. And the soil left behind has been loosened and jostled and jarred and stirred up, down all the tunnels where the roots had been, across great expanses of space and many nuanced locations where all sorts of different life was happening beneath the surface. And the roots take much soil with them.
After some of the dust had settled from the action of the tree being uprooted, I felt invited to spend time in the space it had left. There’s rich air where soil has been upturned, and the tree had enriched the soil very much. The soil had been in my heart; now the air was too. I spent a lot of time just staying in there, breathing the rich air, letting it be part of me. Realizing it was enriching who I am as a person by being allowed to exist. Simply to exist, without the need to fill it.
One of my favorite scripture passages has long been Philippians 3, where Paul says, “Because of Christ, I have come to consider all these advantages I had as disadvantages. Not only that, but I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss…”
As I’ve prayed with it I’ve felt the value of the things which are outweighed by the supreme advantage of knowing Jesus. They are sacred, precious treasures. They are the people I love and the faith practices I’ve been given. And yet, as precious as these are to me and to Jesus, still to know him is even more precious. Because he is so, so good to my heart and I love him. The words speak to the immensity of the gift of knowing Jesus so personally, not to the lack of value of what was lost. This scripture pierced me very much in this season. I found in the carved out space a particularly rich place of encounter with him. A place to spend time with him that was really bonding. And I found that “I have accepted the loss” does not mean that I am good with not having the person. It means I have accepted the space. Because in the space I can connect with Jesus, who loves me so particularly. I can still cherish the person there. The bond with the person is still there. But it’s worth it all to have a space that’s carved out to be just mine and Jesus’.
The space IS a prayer space.
