Billy Sprague - Letter to a Grieving Heart

Prior to Opening Hope: The Day That Breaks Your Heart by Billy Sprague, 2016 Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Opening Hope: The Corner of Beauty and Awesome by Billy Sprague, 2011 Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 1: Heaven Is a Long Hello by Billy Sprague from the project Torn Between Two Worlds , 1991 Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 1: Press On by Billy Sprague & Jim Weber. 1993 Paragon Music Corp. Skin Horse, Inc./Centergetic Music (admin. by Integrated Copyright Group) ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 2: A Ship Out of Water by Bruce Carroll and Billy Sprague, 1996 Sony/ATV Tunes; Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 2: This Life by Billy Sprague from the project Soundtrack of My Soul , 2003 Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 3: Love Lives On by Billy Sprague, 2014 Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 3: I Wish by Billy Sprague, 1989 Billy Sprague/Skin Horse, Inc. & Edward Grant, Inc. ASCAP. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Chapter 3: Beside You in the Rain by Jim Weber and Billy Sprague, 1997 Desperate Heart Music/Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 4: Lay My Burdens Down by Billy Sprague and David Pellegrini, 2017 Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP. Used by permission.

Chapter 5: Til I See You Again by Billy Sprague and Joe Beck. 2000 by Skin Horse, Inc. ASCAP/Acuff-Rose Music (BMI). Used by permission.

I am so sorry you have to face life with this kind of wound. I dont have any answers. Or magic words.

In fact, I would rather sit or walk with you for a silent hour than fill your ears with words that ring hollow and fall so short of real comfort. I would rather do your dishes. Or restock you refrigerator. Or write out the checks to pay your bills, answer your phone, or take care of other mundane details. I would rather listen to you tell me all the things you love about the person you are missing so much. Or light a fire in your fireplace and make you something warm to drink. Or read the Psalms to you. Or bring you a pot of homemade soup. I would rather sleep on the floor by your bed so when you wake up in agony, someone is there. Because these are the things that people did for me when grief broke down my door some years ago.

I cannot explain much about anything. I can only compare notes with you about the road we are on. And begin to tell you a few of the hundreds of little things that eased me forward. At times I didnt want to go forward at all. I even wanted to die and go on to heaven, mostly to stop the pain, which I thought would never cease. (I still do long for heaven in many ways, but no longer out of desperation.) That crossing-over will, of course, come in time. As King David said when his infant son died, I will go to him, but he will not return to me (2 Samuel 12:23).

No one can talk away the pain. Grief drains most words of their power anyway. But a few words carried great strength for me. Jesus spoke about and promised to prepare a great reunion (John 14:1-4). His words always held such power and gave me hope for an eternal gathering with those I love. Those words have become even more powerful each time someone I love leaves this lifea favorite college professor whose heart stopped while sitting at his typewriter my fiance in a car wreck my wifes aunt in a battle with cancer at the age of forty-two my Grandmother Myrtle, who slipped away peacefully in her sleep a few months before her one hundred and second birthday. Naturally, the thought of seeing all of them again after this life became an even stronger hope.

Farewell, adios, and all the goodbye words that hurt us the most

They will be obsolete, no more bon voyage, no arrivederci

Theres no need for auf Wiedersehen

When theres nowhere to go to get back from again

And Ill look at you for an eon or two or three or four or more and say

Hello. Hello, I missed you so, but then well know forever

And have ourselves a long hello

But what about until heaven? How do you drag a heavy, frozen heart around every day and night? Its exhausting. Like a fever. But cold. And you think you will never feel very much again. Except the pain.

For two years after my fiances death, the thawing of my heart was agonizingly slow. This sort of awakening is, for most, subtle in coming, and for good reason. (In fact, I suspect those who seem to bounce back too quickly are trying to put a better face on the pain in their hearts.) Little by little we come alive, Frederick Buechner wrote. This especially applies to grief. The heavy, invisible cloak is a fog that gives way so stubbornly, we are convinced it will never lift.

In my experience, the landscape ahead was shrouded in uncertainty. I couldnt see one day ahead of me. I became a foot watcher, walking through airports or the grocery store staring at my feet, methodically moving through a misty world. One foot, then the other. Even before that I came to associate faith with simply tying my shoes. Some days, especially early on, it was the only act of faith I could muster.

For we live by faith, not by sight.

2 C ORINTHIANS 5:7

Maybe you are stronger than I was. Maybe you are already tying your shoes and running again. Or maybe you cant even concentrate long enough to finish this page and are not ready for much of what I have to say here. Even so, I find myself pouring all this out for what its worth. Dont rush it. The Spirit of God must know what we can handle and is, whether we sense it or not, accompanying (sometimes carrying) each of us along this lovely, dangerous journey. And in some sense, I dont doubt that those who are with him are pulling for us too.

More than a year after RosaLynns death, I took a walk in the woods with a friend. There is something about the muted light filtered through the leaves of a forest canopy and the muffled sound of footsteps on the cushioned ground that softens the world. A forest seems reverent, as if it knows your sorrow.

As we walked, this happily married father of two told me, I want to tell you something you might not want to hear right now and may not believe.

Whats that? I said, ready to discard almost any advice.

The heart is larger than you think.

What he meant was that a lot of people can live in one heart. All those we love occupy a unique place inside us. Forever. His obvious implication for my situation was that someday I could love again. Love can make more room.

My friend was right. I didnt want to hear it. Not at the time. But he had the credibility of someone who knew personal grief. He had lost the woman he intended to marry fifteen years earlier to leukemia.

Certainly, the challenge for some is to love again, especially those who lose a spouse or a lover, but for all of us who must send someone we love on ahead, the struggle is more about coming fully alive again. So I heard the words my friend kindly offered and tucked them away for another time.

You may need to do that with this booktuck it away for another time. Save it for another day. And when you pick it up again, I pray that my journey sheds a little light on your own. And gentles you forward.

I was down in the valley

of the shadow of death

Where the passion for life

drained like blood from my chest

And it took more than my will just

to take a step

When the compass of hope

was gone

In a darkness so black that I wished

for the blues

Every desperate prayer

seemed like heaven refused

And some days I found faith meant

just tying my shoes

And it was all I could do