Tag: grief

Motherhood & Family, Taking Heart, Truth & Orthodoxy

The Belly of my Ship

Faith Chang

I don’t like missing worship, she told me as we streamed service. Which I was both sad and glad to hear.

Days before I knew I’d have to miss service, I was telling a few women how Easter was my favorite day of the year. I love catching a glimpse of heaven in the congregation’s boisterous singing. I am glad for the permission to unbalance my feelings for a moment, to lay aside the tension of holding the “not yet” of God’s promises and allow my heart to fully rejoice in Christ’s victory over death.

Instead, I attended service in pajamas, streaming it online with one of my girls who’s at the tail end of Covid quarantine. And though I’m grateful for our tech team who made that possible, it’s not the same as hearing the voices of God’s people fill the church. Not the same as feeling my faith rise as another takes my hand firmly, looks me in the eye, and tells me, “Christ is risen.” Instead, I spent a good chunk of the day in bed, wiped by an illness which has circumscribed much of my life for 20 years, though I’ve only recently received a diagnosis. Instead, I called another family member recovering from surgery for a brain aneurysm.

Christ is risen indeed.

I say this without irony, definitely without sarcasm. Because although I didn’t get to taste the soul-anchoring celebration I look forward to every year, Easter was an invitation nonetheless. To call to mind the sure, steadfast anchor for my soul, a hope that enters behind the veil (Heb. 6:19-20). Or, to borrow another nautical term, to turn my attention to my ballast.

I first learned about ballasts while reading up on the old church building where I worshipped as a child. After a cross-Atlantic journey to NY, the immigrants who founded the church had used ballast stones from their ship to build their sanctuary. Nowadays, ships use water pumps and tanks instead of these stones, but the purpose is the same. In order to keep vessels stabilized, weight is added below water-level to counteract the effects of the weight above it. Especially in rough seas, the ballast keeps a ship maneuverable and prevents it from becoming top-heavy and tipping over.

I feel as if this Easter, instead of attending the party above deck, I was walked down to the belly of my ship. The reality of the resurrection is not just a fact in history, a tenet of the Christian faith, or an event to be celebrated once a year. It is of first importance, an ever-present reality that keeps us whether we are consciously turning our attention to it or not. It steadies believers through storm and gale, so we are not shipwrecked. It is a ballast for life.

In one of my favorite passages, the apostle Paul wrote a series of counterfactuals describing the dreadful reality that would have been if Jesus did not rise. If Christ were not raised from the dead, he writes, our faith is futile. Because if Jesus’ lungs did not fill with air on the third day, the Bible and its gospel is a lie. If there weren’t a moment in time when his heart hadn’t been beating– and then (hallelujah!) began to pump again, there is no forgiveness of sin. No life after death. No hope beyond the grave. Christians are the most pitiable of all people if Jesus did not walk out of that tomb, leaving his grave clothes behind. (1 Cor. 15:14-19)

Then he goes on to say, but. But Christ has indeed has been raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:20). So, the implication is, the opposite is true. The gospel is true and the Scriptures are reliable. Those who have died in Christ will live. We are not in our sins. We are not to be pitied.

What’s more, Paul explains, is that Jesus’ resurrection was not merely a reversal of death. It was the beginning of a new kind of life. The life Jesus rose to was of a different quality than the one he’d laid down at the cross. His body, sown in dishonor, was raised in honor. Sown mortal, he was raised immortal. Sown in weakness, raised in power. He was the first man to be resurrected this way, but as it was with him, so it will be with us (1 Cor. 15:42-49).

This is my sure and steady hope in life and death. In pandemic quarantines, and chronic illness, and uncertainty about loved one’s health. In anxiety, and weakness, and broken bodies, and struggles with sin, and the world’s innumerable sadnesses. That Christ was the firstfruits of those who have died, his resurrection guaranteeing the harvest to come. That when he returns, those who belong to him will be likewise transformed. That the resurrection seals all God’s promises as true. That I do not speak to, look to, or hope in a dead God, but one who lives and reigns forever. That I am truly forgiven. And that Jesus is still alive, even when it doesn’t feel like Easter.

Beloved, our faith is not futile. Not on Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday, Easter Monday, or any day that follows because Christ is still risen.

He is still risen indeed.

Taking Heart

Your Achingly Beautiful Perseverance

Faith Chang

I’m not sure about the exact numbers, but a good portion (maybe most) of the books I’ve read for leisure in the past few years have been memoir. So many things about the form captivate me. The intersection of storytelling and deep reflection, the invitation to walk the landscape of the memory through well-crafted vignettes, the masterfully-woven themes that slowly emerge. The best ones simultaneously awaken in me a sense of beauty and heartache, no matter how mundane the stories themselves may seem.

Every person carries stories that, if you knew them, would break your heart.

At an airport gate, a young man sits next to me and we make small talk. He tells me why he feels nervous about returning home, about who he’s leaving behind on the East Coast. Friends he’s made and a girl he likes. He begins to tear up. Sorry for dumping this all on you, he says, clearly surprised he said what he did. I tell him that I’m a pastor’s wife and that I’m used to it, people telling me these types of things, before letting him change the subject.

My healthcare provider tells me about what’s going on in her social circles as she works on my back— emergency room visits and disease and suicide. She says it seems like everyone she knows is going through something, and I murmur my agreement as I lie facedown on the table.

During a conversation with a friend, It feels like everyone we know in ministry is getting beaten up. Maybe that’s ministry though. Then a pause. Maybe that’s just life.

This does seem to be the plotline for many these days, hard thing after hard thing. Yet in the midst of it all, I’ve noticed another theme slowly and persistently begin to emerge in the lives of dear ones I know.

I hear it in the voice of fellow workers in ministry. They preach, and pray, shepherding flocks through the devastation of a global pandemic and the destructiveness of indwelling sin. They visit the unrepentant, pleading for them to turn to the grace of God. They are tired, but are not giving up hope that God loves his people.

I read it in the words of friends texting for prayer, chronically ill or caring for those who are, facing loss or mourning unfulfilled hopes. We are all praying for healing, for God to grant them the good desires that he withholds without explanation, but these friends also ask for grace to trust Jesus, courage to love others better. They continue to love the weak and hurting, even as they themselves cry out for relief. All I want for one friend is for her suffering to stop, but she is asking me to ask for more— for rest in God’s love and mercy, for joy in his faithfulness, for hope in his promises, and for endurance.

I sense it in the songs sung by the sinner-saints meeting weekly in our small, local church. Battered and broken, we declare the goodness of Jesus, believing God hears and receives us, that he sees and remembers.

I saw it on the other end of that flight with the tearful young man, where over the course of a few days, I caught up with those who knew me when I was fresh out of college. In even the shorter conversations, I got glimpses of what they’ve been rejoicing in and what new or old things continue to be difficult. Many are walking through loss, uncertainty, and trauma— yet still seeking Jesus, still committed to being in his church. And this time, I was the one crying in the airport on the way home, moved by how clearly I witnessed in them the faith described by Peter in the Scriptures. Though they have not seen God, though they don’t see him now, they love him still (1 Peter 1:8).

I am experiencing in real time the perseverance of the saints. And like the best of stories, it is both heartrending and achingly beautiful.

The Apostle Paul wrote that suffering produces endurance, and from that character, and then hope. I have been thinking lately about why he’d write hope there— not love or godliness. Or why not just end at “character”? Why make hope the culmination here of what God does in the midst of suffering? I am beginning to see now that God does not just make his people stronger or more righteous through trial. We all know that sometimes difficulties make us stronger, that suffering can produce character even without God in the picture. But for believers in the heat of affliction, something otherworldly emerges: a hope against all hope, a faith that perseveres.

I have never had trouble believing that God raises the dead, but that he keeps his own until the end— the longer I have been a Christian, the harder it’s been to trust. It sobers and humbles me now then, how God is using the trials of those around me to deal with my unbelief. Through the fire, I am seeing the precious genuineness of the faith of God’s children, and I stand silenced. The people of God have always been a persevering people, a people learning to hope against hope. And this hope is miraculous in its very nature.

Christian perseverance, Christian hope, is not a fake-it-til you make it, silver-lining way of dealing with suffering. Neither is it flashy, spiritual triumphalism nor self-reliant grit. It is salvation worked out with blood, sweat, and effort and worked within by the Holy Spirit. It is the tested faith of those who have found safety in the one who has been a refuge for all generations. Its beauty is like that of century-old forts, made of solid stone, enduring battle, the elements, and time. We have tested it and found it to be trustworthy, but it still takes faith to believe it will continue to stand in time to come.

This perseverance says that though I do not yet see God making all things right, he will do so one day. That though I do not feel like what he has ordained for me is good, he who gave his own Son for me will not withhold from me anything truly good. It says that though I am weak, and confused, and uncertain about many things, God remains steadfast in his love and unchanging in his ways. That though things all is not right, he still indeed is good. That what is seen may lead me to despair, but there are realities beyond what I can see that give me reason to hope. Not the least of which is the truth that Christ lived, died, and now lives.

I have felt this hope in the handshake of the strongest of believers. A widow at the end of a receiving line of her husband, a pastor’s, funeral. They’d lived through the cultural revolution. She’d worshipped in the dark with her children, curtains drawn. He’d survived harsh labor. She took my hand, looked me in the eyes, and spoke, her voice gentle and firm, Ganxie Zhu— an expression of praise. And I wondered if she was here ministering to us rather than the other way around.

I have also seen this tenacity in the saints who feel themselves to be the weakest. I think of how sometimes the smallest of plants can be surprisingly hard to uproot. I’ll tug at the tinier weeds in the garden, assuming they’ll come out with no issue, only to have the stems snap where they meet the soil and the roots remain intact. Here is the woman who, in the absence of tidy answers, remains sure of what she hopes for, certain of what she does not see (Hebrews 11:1). The weary servant of God who confesses that while he is pressed, he is not crushed, he is perplexed but not driven to despair (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). Both have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. God has been faithful to keep his promises, and they know there is more reason than not to continue to trust him now.

And I witness it in the lives of believers all around me now. In the absence of seeing, in suffering, their hope is being forged and proven, because, who hopes for what he already has? (Romans 8:24). Ours is a supernatural faith, and it’s only when it’s against all odds that we know, surely, it must be upheld by a supernatural strength.

We may not all have memoirs in the pipeline, but, oh, what stories we will have to listen to and tell in ages to come. Whether God’s strength working in us means we will one day find ourselves sprinting across the finish line, or whether we feel for sure we will be limping, inching, and clinging onto dear life up to it, we will declare him faithful who has kept us. Through stories of darkness, dangers, grief, and trial. Of faithful endurance, inexplicable peace, and hope that has not put us to shame. By God’s grace, I’ll have a few to share. Dear, persevering saint, you will too.

Taking Heart

Grief and Gratitude

Faith Chang

And just like that the girls have come to the end of their school year. I know “just like that” is an understatement. But it’s honestly what it feels like. These long months have passed in a blink.

I am grateful. Proud of the ways my daughters have been more resilient than I understood they were being at the time. I think of that morning I saw my brave girl reading at her desk, sitting in the Zoom waiting room for so long I asked her what was going on. Her class hadn’t signed on when she thought they would. She’d been doing so well virtually, I didn’t think to ask until then if it was hard being apart from the rest of her class. She nodded. Then the tears came. Oh, my sweet, tough and tender-hearted girl.

It’s been a tough year, but my kids have flourished and grown, and are healthy and well. There is so much to thank God for.

I also feel a sense of loss for them, more than I’d expected. It started when it finally hit me they’d really come the end of the school year without learning in-person with the amazing teachers they’ve come to love. Jeff felt it too. When he brought them to the school on the last day for ice-cream, he watched our oldest running in the field with her friends. “She got to just be a kid,” he said.

Grief and gratitude. There have been good reasons for both this year. The world is so broken and God is so faithful. Neither truth negates the other, and today my heart is experiencing the interwovenness of both.

It was the same this Sunday, our first day back at church in person after half a year apart. Months ago, Jeff had come home to find me crying. I missed singing with our people so much, longed for the day the worship team wouldn’t be standing in front of an empty sanctuary. Still the joy of gathering again yesterday was mingled with sorrow as I realized how many hard things remain unchanged. Some dated to before the world shut down and some since. There were faces missing— one beloved now worships with the Lord; many other beloved are drifting from the faith.

There is space for both lament and thanksgiving in the Scriptures, and not in a compartmentalized way either, as if they are to be kept for separate places and times. We see it as we read the Old Testament, how at the rebuilding of the temple, some “wept with a loud voice” and others “shouted aloud for joy” so that “the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping” (Ezra 3:13). The legitimate grief of those who’d known the glory of the former temple was expressed alongside of the equally legitimate joy over the new one.

It’s interesting to me that it says both the weeping and joyful shouting were loud. Holding both grief and gratitude is not like mixing cold and hot to get a tepid middle temperature. They don’t balance or cancel each other out. The voices of both were distinct, yet not easily separated. It can often feel that way in life. In the midst of a global pandemic, even more so, I think.

Our lists are long with staggering losses and life-giving graces. There are thousands of reasons to weep. And just as many to give thanks.

So we lament loud. God, we’ve lost so much! There is so much yet to be mended and made whole! How long? Have mercy, come quickly, and make it right!

We praise loud. Lord, for all that has been and is being restored, for all the foretastes of kingdom come, for the grace seen and unseen, we cannot thank you enough!

We will cry and we will shout. We will rejoice and we will mourn. And it’ll be ok if we can’t tell apart the sound of one from the other.

Taking Heart, Truth & Orthodoxy

Today We Wait

Faith Chang

I never thought much about that Saturday, not until I read this page to my daughter. Years later, the phrase, imagined by the author of how the disciples felt that day, would rise to the forefront of my mind as I walked through my own loss:

We will be sad forever.

Today, the Church calendar leads us into remembrance. In between yesterday’s and tomorrow’s services, we embody in real time the hours between the first Good Friday and Easter. He was crucified, died, and was buried, our church recites weekly. That Jesus, God incarnate, died and stayed dead in a borrowed tomb is central to the Christian confession.

On this side of the resurrection, our minds often jump from cross to victory, but the gospel accounts don’t do that. All four writers walk us through Jesus’ burial, and as I read the accounts, I am surprised by how physical, how tangible the descriptions are. Those of us who have seen death up close recognize the details as common— decisions about what to do with Jesus’ body, how and when it would be prepared, where he would be laid to rest. These are the logistics of death. They are mundane. They are utterly and unspeakably awful.

I think of that first Holy Saturday, of the ones who loved Jesus now bereaved and bewildered, reckoning with the fact that they were waking up and Jesus was still dead. How crushing it must have been to lose not only Master and Friend, but their hope. Did they question what all their years with the rabbi had meant, what their proclamations of him being the Son of God amounted to, now that he was gone? “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” one follower would say the next day, not knowing he was speaking to the risen Savior himself (Lk. 24:21).

They did not know that as they wept, he lay lifeless for their redemption. They could not understand what was to come.

I see Holy Saturday as the stark contrast between warranted despair and grounded hope. If the disciples had not walked through those horrible days— if Jesus had not really died, and I mean “really” in its being in congruence with the tangible, material, gruesome reality of death in this world — we would remain under the full and just wrath of God (Rom. 5:9-10). And if, lying in the tomb, his heart did not begin to pump and his lungs never drew breath again, if his body did not grow warm and he did not stand to leave his grave clothes behind, truly it would be right to be sad forever. Our faith would be futile, we would be dead in our sins, found to be liars, and of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:12-19).

As I get older, I find this Saturday increasingly meaningful. Above all, I am reminded that the events we remember this weekend are the basis of any hope we have as believers. As the years go by and life feels more complicated, I am more certain that the simple truth of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are worth staking my whole life on. I am increasingly convinced that I have nothing to boast in except the cross of Jesus Christ, and that he who loved me and gave himself for me is worth following. We walk this way between his resurrection and his return, not by sight, but by faith in what God has done and what he has promised he will do.

And as I await my own resurrection, my losses accumulating until then, Holy Saturday is a tangible reminder in the waiting that there is unspeakable joy to come. That God is good and wise even in the most painful trials, and that at the dawning of the new Day, there will be glory beyond imagination for those who put their trust in him.

Easter is coming, but for now we wait.

And beloved, though today we may wait, Easter is coming.

Taking Heart

On Processing my Lack of Grief

Faith Chang

I don’t do much cross-posting here, but I have a piece over at Reformed Margins today that may be of help to some readers here. In it I process my absence of tears in response to recent events, and how I believe God is inviting some of us to learn to grieve.

Here’s the introduction:

Why aren’t I angrier? Sadder? Why aren’t I speaking out? Compelled to action for my own people?

Even as fellow Asian Americans have been speaking out in recent days about their grief and anger about the way people in our communities are being and have been treated, I believe there are many of us who are still processing our own disparate responses. Like fellow RM contributor Larry, I have been wondering why my own reaction has as tempered as it’s been to the increasing anti-Asian racism and violence this year. 

This week, Larry wrote about the way the model minority myth can numb us to trauma. In his guest post, Peter Ong touched upon the way many Asian Americans deal with the pain and shame of being perpetually othered, “swallowing the bitterness.” Today, I want to explore another reason why some of us, myself included, may be having trouble grieving over anti-Asian American racism. It hit me while reading something Youn Yuh-jung, the 73-year old South Korean actor who starred in the film Minari, said in an interview.

Youn, speaking of the immigrant experience of those in her generation said this: “We expected to be treated poorly, so there was no sorrow.” 

You can read the rest of it here: Learning to Grieve Anti-Asian Racism as an Asian American