This Christmas I sit in a family room that I’ve sat in countless times over a ten year period. It’s a spacious room that is flavored by the American South, football, and the nine grandchildren with which my mother- and father-in-law have been blessed. I’ve watched several lifetime’s worth of football in this room, slept in recliners here, played games here, changed diapers here, and opened presents here. I’ve laughed here and I’ve cried here. And I’ve laughed until I’ve cried here.
This Christmas there is a void in this room. Absent is my brother-in-law, Rusty, who left us abruptly early one morning last July. He is conspicuous here by his absence.
It was in this room that I saw him last. This past May we shared the better part of 24 hours here. We were sitting near each other when he rose, announced he was leaving, hugged us, and quickly disappeared out the door--bound for Panama City Beach. I never saw him again.
Now as I sit here I see remnants of Rusty all around me. When I arrived this past Thursday, I was greeted by a nearly life-sized cardboard cutout of him, holding a football, wearing a little kid’s Chiefs football helmet, and striking a shirtless Heisman Trophy pose. Although I laughed when I saw it, a big part of me wanted to tackle it to the ground--the reasons for which I cannot fully articulate.
Rusty’s presence envelopes this room. Above a sofa is the Peyton Manning autographed jersey Rusty gave my mother-in-law Toni on Christmas Day four years ago. Even though he wasn’t necessarily a fan of Peyton or of Tiger Woods, he would honor his mother by indulging her with memorials to these athletes, simply because she loved them.
There are other photos here of Rusty. There are three that share a common frame which are of him caddying for my son Davis in the Missouri Junior Amateur Golf Championships. That was a special time, and it gave us Rusty at his best.
Beyond these photos are more memories. Just two years ago, we laughed when I told him this room was the “Island of Misfit Dogs” because of all of Toni’s dogs that we always worked around during Christmas. We enjoyed teasing Toni about her dogs.
There are countless other memories—from in this room, or the property in general, and even from another house in the same town that my in-laws called home. There were times fishing for largemouth in the lake, shooting my son Timothy’s new .22 rifle, playing touch football, shooting hoops, and the time Rusty dressed up as Santa Claus, fooling me maybe but not our daughter Olivia.
Being back in this room has made Rusty’s death more real. For several months and for a variety of painful reasons, I’ve had to think of Rusty in terms of an “Estate” or a “decedent” or according to some other sterile terms that have been forced upon us.
So in a way grief is rekindled here, or maybe allowed to set in for real at last. It’s a boil that wants to be lanced, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Grief has to be experienced in its own time for each individual and it seems rarely will leave us in one fell swoop. Instead, it leaves us like air through a small pin-hole in a balloon. And at that, it doesn’t leave us steadily or in equal increments. Sometimes we take great pains to suppress it. Other times we may give it permission to do its work. I realize that it will never be gone completely or for good.
I’ve been thinking about writing this essay or blog post or whatever you want to call it for a couple of days now. But when I thought about it I would find it too personal or too painful or I would be concerned how painful it might be to others. I started it then walked away from it at least a couple of times. After all, Christmas should be a happy time, why taint it for others?
What’s prompted me to actually finish, however, is the Christian concept of being a steward of one’s grief. The idea of being a steward is to watch over or protect or keep undefiled something that belongs to another. It took me some time to fully grasp that my children were a stewardship of mine. They are God’s, and it’s my job to watch over them, to protect them, teach them, until they are in a sense “given back” to God (not that they were ever out of his sight).
So to look at grief as a stewardship, I must acknowledge that it has been given to me in some sense. This is hard. We want to think of grief as something random, as something that has just been dropped in our laps, or as something we’ve just ended up with, not something that may have been delivered by a benevolent God.
I believe to properly steward my own grief I must accurately give you an account for the hope that is in me (I Peter 3:15). To do so, however, is painful. It requires an honest look at the object(s) of my affections and the object of my faith and how these often take my focus away from where they should be.
But graciously, the painful look at where I’ve fallen short takes me by grace back to where the focus must be redirected. Such an assessment causes me to cling to that which is unseen. It helps me to recognize that what is seen is transient—a vapor—but what is unseen is eternal (II Corinthians 4:18).
This weekend I realized how much I miss my brother-in-law and how I’d really like to understand and explain his life and death. But I don’t believe, this side of eternity, that I’ll be able to do that. And if I’m honest with myself, I know that doing so is not of lasting significance. Even less significant is the management of my own personal sorrow. What is paramount is extoling the virtues of the One true Creator and Redeemer.
As I said previously, I thought writing about this might not be appropriate for Christmas. But what I’ve realized is this is the absolute best time to write about it. In I Timothy 1:15 the Apostle Paul says: “This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
So Jesus, from birth, was on a mission. The story of Christmas cannot be separated from the story of Easter. Because of the curse of all men through Adam, sin entered the world and sin led to death (Romans 5:12). But Jesus Christ came, as a baby, then lived the life that we could not live and died the death that we should have died. This is the gospel, and it is my only hope to make sense out of anything. It is the only way I can steward my grief.
The gospel is not simply a crutch or spin, but is the message that undergirds everything. And, as author Jerry Bridges once said it is the only essential message in all of history. I believe this message, although sometimes difficult, is the answer to Rusty’s life and death, and to my life and death as well. Christ Jesus came to redeem a fallen and broken world.
The Christian artist Michael Card wrote a song about his grandfather called For F.F.B. Michael’s grandfather was a country preacher and died while Michael was quite young, perhaps even before he was born. In the song For F.F.B., he concludes with a recording from one of his grandfather’s sermons. The recording is weak and scratchy but its message summarizes all that I’m trying to say here:
"I have no hope, except that I believe that Christ died for my sins, according to Scriptures. I expect to swing out into eternity…on that."
