There are lots of analogies to describe what grief is like. One that especially resonates with me is that grief is like a hole in the floor of our house. When the loss is fresh, it seems that we can’t escape the room that has the gaping hole in it. It looms large before us and we fear falling in and never being able to crawl back out. 

Eventually, we find that we are able to navigate carefully around the hole and maybe even venture to other rooms in our house. But sometimes, when we aren’t paying attention, we will suddenly find the hole right at our feet, threatening to pull us over the edge. This happens when unexpected things trigger our grief—a certain smell, a date on the calendar, coming across a memento, or just because it’s time—whether we like it or not—to feel the hard feelings again.

As more time passes, we wind up spending less and less time in the room with the hole in the floor. The hole is still there, of course. It doesn’t get smaller. But, if we let it, the house gets bigger. And herein lies the key to growing with grief. We can only extend this metaphorical house of ours if we allow the Lord to be the Architect. If we hand our lives over to the Him, including all of our joy and all of our sorrow, He will expand our dwelling into a veritable palace. He will enrich our lives by adding countless rooms full of experiences, memories, opportunities, and love. So much love. The new love in our lives doesn’t erase our loss, but it can soften the edges of it. 

I’m sure I’m not alone in being frequently overwhelmed by my to-do list. Or rather, lists. Sometimes it seems I’m wearing so many hats that I might as well be Bartholomew Cubbins.

Many of us could probably do with less on our plates, but for the purpose of this article, I’d actually like to focus on what a blessing busy-ness can be. While I’ve had a few near panic attacks of late, I have also had a positive realization that I hope might be helpful to some of you. That realization is this:

Having things to do is a blessing. They are signs that I’m really living.

Sometimes I feel as though I am desperately waiting for the next chance to rest. Rest is good. The Lord built rest into the very fabric of creation, so we know that it’s divinely recommended. But is rest the point of living? No. The point of living is to be useful. Yes, we can (and often do) take on too much. But if we strike some kind of balance between rest and busy-ness, then having chock full days of errands and chores can truly be a blessing. They are a sign that we are deeply alive, humming with uses. 

We read a lot of children’s books in our house. One of my longstanding favorites is “The Pout-Pout Fish” by Deborah Diesen. The Pout-Pout Fish follows the tale (or should I say “tail”) of an Eeyore-esque fish with big pouty lips. As he gloomily encounters his underwater friends, they each urge him to try being a little more pleasant. But the Pout-Pout Fish is stuffed to the gills with excuses for why he is incapable of change:

“I hear what you’re saying, but it’s just the way I am.”
“I’d like to be more friendly, but it isn’t up to me.”
“But I haven’t any choice. Take a look and you’ll see why.”
“With a mouth like mine, I am destined to be glum.”

He follows each of these excuses with the same refrain:

“I’m a pout-pout fish
With a pout-pout face,
So I spread the dreary-wearies
All over the place.
Blub 
Bluuub
Bluuuuuuub”

Poor Mr. Fish. He is stuck believing that just because he looks pouty, his personality has to match. I can’t help but think how often human beings wind up stuck in a similar merry-go-round of melancholy. 

“Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant and said to Him, “Do You hear what these are saying?”
And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read,

‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have perfected praise’?”
Matthew 21: 14-16

This part of the Palm Sunday story has always filled me with joy. I love the idea that little children are the paragons of praise. Where the chief priests and scribes saw a threat, the children saw salvation. While Jesus healed the blind, the chief priests and scribes clung to their spiritual blindness and dismissed His power. But the children believed. They saw His wonders and didn’t doubt Him. In this way, children are also paragons of belief. Their willingness to be led—the very definition of innocence—is what makes children so profoundly special. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many favorite children’s games revolve around sight. “Peek-a-boo” is a classic example. Young children simply delight in covering their eyes, pretending that they can’t see or be seen, and then, magically, they appear again as soon as they take their hands away. “I Spy” is another game that comes to mind. What a simple, but effective way to reinforce a young child’s awareness of the colors and shapes of the world around them. These types of games encourage the players to watch and notice—to embrace what’s right in front of us and to rejoice in the fact that it’s there and that we’ve found it.