Seven Years

"Seven years,” someone once told me. "Seven years is how long it takes for grief to run its course, for a shattered life to feel normal again, for the aching gap to lessen and close."

By year two I reasoned, “This pain certainly cannot continue for much longer — it’s too great.” The loss of Luke, the loss of family as I knew it, the loss of life without trauma. The hurt lasted in so many ways: but as life seems to do, it did continue on, move forward. Today marks year seven, and I hear I sit, changed indeed.

In so many ways, their words proved true:

Seven years could mean a new normal, perhaps — I don't think about calling Luke to tell him about my day, and I don't expect to hear him talk about basketball in the evenings. I don’t know his opinions on recent ideas, and really, he doesn't know who I’ve grown up to be. He is no longer a part of my "normal" life in any sense of the word, only a memory now lodged deeply into my heart.

But, this too — seven years doesn't mean he's forgotten, a callous "moved on." It means my heart has been profoundly shaped both by his life and by these seven years — by the life he loved and the legacy he left, by the joy he brought as a brother, by the empty space created new. By the way my heart has broken, by the compassion filling its place. By how I know deeply of traits like resilience and courage — by how I have stumbled into pits offering facades and walls — by how I have seen the community of Love rise up around to carry me through.

The back windshield of my car shattered unexpectedly this week — it simply burst into a thousand little pieces, tiny shards. I drove around with it for a few days, waiting to replace it, squinting through the pieces to see the cars around. “When someone is shattered, the pieces sometimes break funny,” a book spoke last week. I’ve thought of that often.

I’ve found there isn’t really a straight roadmap to grief, only shattered pieces breaking funny — sometimes creating beautiful mosaics, sometimes cutting everyone close. My grief has done both, I know. It’s been seven years now, and I can see how the pieces and shards are starting to shift, starting to change, starting to meld together, perhaps.

In my life, I’m praying for a mosaic to be the ending story. I’m throwing the “seven-year” rule out the window, asking Jesus to make a whole-life rule that is something beautiful. I think He will. Luke’s life certainly ended as a mosaic — shattered, but not wasted. "Crushed, but not destroyed. Perplexed, but not abandoned." Yes, indeed. God’s promises are true — we can cling to them today. Yes, time will move forward, and yes, we serve a God faithful in seven years, and in seventy years, and in seven thousand years too.

Luke, Happy Heaven Day. I cannot wait to worship in eternity with you for seven hundred thousand years — I know we will look back at the mosaics of our lives and rejoice.