New Year Same Pain

(Our last family vacation)

I’ve dreaded this day a lot over the last few weeks. This is the first time I wasn’t excited to ring in the New Year. Normally, I’m all about setting new goals and I love the fresh start. A new year to plan trips as a family. To forgive past mistakes. To set new resolutions to chase after. This New Years, all I could think about was that I’m entering into a year my baby girl won’t ever see. For some reason, it felt even harder than Christmas.

There’s a sting when I hear or see the year 2023. There will be no family trips or precious memories that include her in the year 2023. It exemplifies the feeling that we’ve left her behind. As we say goodbye to the year 2022, in a way, it feels like we are saying goodbye to her all over again.

The year 2023 will also mark the anniversary of Ellie’s passing. Another dreaded day. A day where we have to relive everything that happened, where the images in our heads will be as clear as they were that day. We will feel the pain all over again. I do this almost on a daily basis, but on that day, it will be different. More permanent. I’ve seen how the movie ends and it’s not one I want to re-watch. But I don’t have a choice.

I remember sitting in our therapist’s office about six months after the accident, and telling her that I felt worse. I couldn’t understand why, because initially I thought grief was supposed to get better with time. She told me this was completely normal, and that most people do think time heals grief. Most people silently expect you to feel better after some time has passed. They expect that you’ve gotten back into a new routine, that you’ve adjusted to your new life. They go back to carrying on normal conversations. The “how are you” texts and calls lessen because people think you’re doing okay. And these silent expectations have unintentionally made me feel unseen. It made me feel like people just forgot. To watch everyone carrying on with the holidays and their expectations of our family made me bitter. Not angry at anyone specifically, but angry at the situation. How are we even in this situation? How is any of this even possible?

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is only six verses long. It’s probably overlooked because it’s difficult to grasp its full meaning on your own. In Mark 10:46-52 a blind beggar named Bartimaeus cried out to Jesus repeatedly, even though he was warned to be quiet. Jesus calls for Bartimaeus to be brought to Him and He heals him from years of blindness. Bartimaeus begins to see and then joins Jesus on His mission.

This is Jesus’s last stop before entering into Jerusalem to face the cross. His last moments before facing death and He chooses to stop; He allows himself to be interrupted so that he can serve someone else. So that he can heal someone else.

Verse 48 says, “Many warned him to keep quiet, but he was crying out all the more.” Bartimaeus wasn’t afraid to publicly declare not only his belief in Jesus as the Messiah, but his deep, aching need for Jesus. Bartimaeus knew there was no hope for his sight to be restored, except through a healing miracle performed by Jesus himself.

It's also important to notice that Bartimaeus was named in this passage. Previously in the book of Mark, those who were suffering weren’t typically named. That’s how important Bartimaeus was to Jesus. Jesus had previously told those who He healed to keep quiet, to not reveal his healing. But Jesus doesn’t do that with Bartimaeus.

Beggars were very common in bigger cities. People were used to walking around and seeing beggars asking for money. Beggars would also try and use religious phrases to manipulate people into feeling generous. Beggars were usually a nuisance to everyone around. That’s why they tried to make Bartimaeus be quiet.

Verse 51 “Then Jesus answered him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus wasn’t asking Bartimaeus to reveal his symptoms, He was offering him the gift of connection. Jesus knew Bartimaeus had felt unseen for so long. He knew people didn’t understand what Bartimaeus was going through. He knew Bartimaeus was silently struggling.

But Bartimaeus wasn’t a disruption for Jesus. Jesus wasn’t too busy to notice him. Bartimaeus probably went most of his life feeling unseen. But one encounter with Jesus changed that for him. Jesus saw him.

Verse 52 “Immediately he could see and began to follow Jesus on the road.” His encounter with Jesus changed him so much that he went from sitting on the side of the road in the beginning of the story to rising to his feet and joining Jesus.

That’s the power of encountering Jesus on your own. He’s the same now as He was then. He still performs supernatural healings. You just have to surrender it all to Him.

I wish there was a checklist for grief. I wish there was a book that said, “Do these five things and you’ll be healed.” But there isn’t. It’s not one of those situations where ‘time heals all wounds.” Almost a year in to our grief journey, and we don’t feel any less pain.

But learning, at the age of 32, what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus has been the only thing that has helped in dealing with the pain. It has helped me to feel seen. It has helped me not feel like a nuisance. It has helped pick up the pieces of my shattered heart.

Currently, that’s my only advice for people walking through grief. It doesn’t make sense. It leaves with you a thousand questions you’ll never get answers to this side of heaven. It can easily make you bitter (and rightfully so). Therapy helps. But walking through grief takes a supernatural healing that just isn’t found through earthly things. Jesus is who we’re aching for.