I'd like to share an extract from the beautifully written 'Getting through the night' by Eugenia Price, which was lent to me by a friend. 
These are the most comforting words I've come across - I hope that you can take some time to have a read. Please don't be put off by the length ... take a peek at some of it and I'm sure (and I pray) that it'll minister to you too
"No human being - no other human being on earth - can understand the weight of your burden. But here is the key:God does understand the exact extent and pain of your grief because He created you in the first place- as you are. He didn't create you as someone else is; He created you as you are. Say aloud to Him this minute: 'Thou knowest my downsitting and mind uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.'
And remember that this Creator God says of Himself where you are concerned: 'I am understanding.' To understand you and your suffering is God's very nature.......
'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' (Ps 30.5b)
God does understand our nights, but His intentions for us in the long run have to do with the morning. With the 'joy (that) cometh in the morning.' Does joy seem out of reach to you now? If it does, God knows all about it, but think this: Isn't freedom from this pain what you want more than anything? Don't you cry out for the pain to end? Isn't this what you really want? Then, can you grasp, however weakly, the tip end of the truth that God can bring about your relief? Your morning most certainly is God's will. If it isn't, then Jesus was confused when He said that He came to earth to get into the weeping with us so that we could have 'a more abundant life.'
Do you think He was confused? Or lying? Or holding out something that you alone can never reach? Does the thought of an abundant life again - ever - for you seem impossible? No one understands better than God if it does. After all, Jesus did come to earth as one of us. Even when He knew He would raise His beloved friend Lazarus from the dead in minutes, He wept. 'Jesus wept.' To you, right now, that short sentence could be the most important verse in the entire Bible.
God is not disappointed in you for weeping, for feeling that you can never be whole again. He knows you. He knows exactly how that stretch of empty time up ahead appears to you now. Jesus was weeping for His lost friend, but He was also weeping because of pain in His own heart at the sight of such grief in the eyes of Lazarus' two sisters. Jesus is weeping over you now - even though He knows of your morning to come. He is weeping even though He has that morning ready for you at this minute. It is ready - but unlike so many of our well-meaning friends who seem taken aback when we don't latch onto their offered Scripture texts and bounce back, God understands. He understands the way in which a little more time can give you a chance to make your way thru the early shock. He has your morning ready, He could lead you right into it, but He knows you can't follow - quite yet.
He lives right now in eternity, where time does not exist, but all that could be contained of God in a human being did visit our planet and was trapped in time - for 33 years, as we reckon it. He knows what it's like for you, trapped also in time, facing years ahead without your loved one. He understands how endless it seems to you this minute to have to wait for some nebulous 'morning' to come. I don't believe for an instant that He had to enter human time in order to find out what it was like. I believe with all my heart that He did it so that we would know that He knows. We do not cry out to some remote, half-attentive deity when we cry out to Christ. Everything He did - from His birth in a stable to His ugly death on a cross - He did so that we would know that He knows.
Still, safe passage through your night of weeping is an accomplished fact for Jesus Christ because He, like your loved one, is no longer caught in time. God is not trapped in time and neither is your loved one. And yet both can remember, can, at this moment, understand, identify with the fact that you are still time-bound. They know. Your loved one knows about you now, as does God. Paul wrote: absent from the body, present with the Lord. John, who lived so close to Jesus on earth, wrote: it doth not yet appear what shall be: but we know that we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. Your loved one sees God as He really is. Not as our numerous and distorted human concepts have made Him seem to be.
Let this become a part of you. Your loved one and God know what a wrenching experience it was for you to wake up this morning and realize, all over again, the dark reality of your grief. They know how desolate your table seems .how deafening the silence is around you. How long the night. They know that well-meaning friends, at times, only added to your exhaustion in the first days after the loss.
Your loved one, with God, knows. Your loved one now has the mind of God and knows exactly how this is all going to come out for you. As God knows. They know that one day, you will turn the corner so that you can begin to use the very hours which now seem only to be abusing you.
Time is a trap for us on earth, but it is also our only means of measuring the way out. We would have no idea at all how to live without time. Try to keep clear that God is understanding and now, so is your loved one. God and your loved one can also remember what it is like to be time bound. They and everyone who has ever entered the eternal presence are with you in this. Coping with time today tonight isnt your work alone. There is a cloud of witnesses.
Try, just for a moment, to see your loved one no longer ill, no longer wasted and tired bounding with the very energy of God. The God-sensitized capacity of your loved one now to know real awareness of beauty, of love, of praise, of song. Can we imagine this? Now oh, joy Life has caught the one you love. Life Himself holds your loved one, will protect and care for every need forever. Caught and held by Life, by Love, and yet free as we cannot understand freedom.
Jesus said: Where I am, there you will be also. My lost loved ones, . Are with Him, and since He also said: I will not leave you comfortless, I myself will come to you, they are with me too. They are with me? If I believe that the life of God indwells me, and if I believe that my absent loved ones are a part of His life, yes, we are all together.
You trusted your beloved with your love here on earth. Cant you trust your beloved now to the love of God?"
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. Pax Christi!
Take care,
Marlene
Ps If anyone has any of their own consoling words to add to this thread, that would be great
These are the most comforting words I've come across - I hope that you can take some time to have a read. Please don't be put off by the length ... take a peek at some of it and I'm sure (and I pray) that it'll minister to you too
"No human being - no other human being on earth - can understand the weight of your burden. But here is the key:God does understand the exact extent and pain of your grief because He created you in the first place- as you are. He didn't create you as someone else is; He created you as you are. Say aloud to Him this minute: 'Thou knowest my downsitting and mind uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.'
And remember that this Creator God says of Himself where you are concerned: 'I am understanding.' To understand you and your suffering is God's very nature.......
'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' (Ps 30.5b)
God does understand our nights, but His intentions for us in the long run have to do with the morning. With the 'joy (that) cometh in the morning.' Does joy seem out of reach to you now? If it does, God knows all about it, but think this: Isn't freedom from this pain what you want more than anything? Don't you cry out for the pain to end? Isn't this what you really want? Then, can you grasp, however weakly, the tip end of the truth that God can bring about your relief? Your morning most certainly is God's will. If it isn't, then Jesus was confused when He said that He came to earth to get into the weeping with us so that we could have 'a more abundant life.'
Do you think He was confused? Or lying? Or holding out something that you alone can never reach? Does the thought of an abundant life again - ever - for you seem impossible? No one understands better than God if it does. After all, Jesus did come to earth as one of us. Even when He knew He would raise His beloved friend Lazarus from the dead in minutes, He wept. 'Jesus wept.' To you, right now, that short sentence could be the most important verse in the entire Bible.
God is not disappointed in you for weeping, for feeling that you can never be whole again. He knows you. He knows exactly how that stretch of empty time up ahead appears to you now. Jesus was weeping for His lost friend, but He was also weeping because of pain in His own heart at the sight of such grief in the eyes of Lazarus' two sisters. Jesus is weeping over you now - even though He knows of your morning to come. He is weeping even though He has that morning ready for you at this minute. It is ready - but unlike so many of our well-meaning friends who seem taken aback when we don't latch onto their offered Scripture texts and bounce back, God understands. He understands the way in which a little more time can give you a chance to make your way thru the early shock. He has your morning ready, He could lead you right into it, but He knows you can't follow - quite yet.
He lives right now in eternity, where time does not exist, but all that could be contained of God in a human being did visit our planet and was trapped in time - for 33 years, as we reckon it. He knows what it's like for you, trapped also in time, facing years ahead without your loved one. He understands how endless it seems to you this minute to have to wait for some nebulous 'morning' to come. I don't believe for an instant that He had to enter human time in order to find out what it was like. I believe with all my heart that He did it so that we would know that He knows. We do not cry out to some remote, half-attentive deity when we cry out to Christ. Everything He did - from His birth in a stable to His ugly death on a cross - He did so that we would know that He knows.
Still, safe passage through your night of weeping is an accomplished fact for Jesus Christ because He, like your loved one, is no longer caught in time. God is not trapped in time and neither is your loved one. And yet both can remember, can, at this moment, understand, identify with the fact that you are still time-bound. They know. Your loved one knows about you now, as does God. Paul wrote: absent from the body, present with the Lord. John, who lived so close to Jesus on earth, wrote: it doth not yet appear what shall be: but we know that we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. Your loved one sees God as He really is. Not as our numerous and distorted human concepts have made Him seem to be.
Let this become a part of you. Your loved one and God know what a wrenching experience it was for you to wake up this morning and realize, all over again, the dark reality of your grief. They know how desolate your table seems .how deafening the silence is around you. How long the night. They know that well-meaning friends, at times, only added to your exhaustion in the first days after the loss.
Your loved one, with God, knows. Your loved one now has the mind of God and knows exactly how this is all going to come out for you. As God knows. They know that one day, you will turn the corner so that you can begin to use the very hours which now seem only to be abusing you.
Time is a trap for us on earth, but it is also our only means of measuring the way out. We would have no idea at all how to live without time. Try to keep clear that God is understanding and now, so is your loved one. God and your loved one can also remember what it is like to be time bound. They and everyone who has ever entered the eternal presence are with you in this. Coping with time today tonight isnt your work alone. There is a cloud of witnesses.
Try, just for a moment, to see your loved one no longer ill, no longer wasted and tired bounding with the very energy of God. The God-sensitized capacity of your loved one now to know real awareness of beauty, of love, of praise, of song. Can we imagine this? Now oh, joy Life has caught the one you love. Life Himself holds your loved one, will protect and care for every need forever. Caught and held by Life, by Love, and yet free as we cannot understand freedom.
Jesus said: Where I am, there you will be also. My lost loved ones, . Are with Him, and since He also said: I will not leave you comfortless, I myself will come to you, they are with me too. They are with me? If I believe that the life of God indwells me, and if I believe that my absent loved ones are a part of His life, yes, we are all together.
You trusted your beloved with your love here on earth. Cant you trust your beloved now to the love of God?"
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. Pax Christi!
Take care,
Marlene
Ps If anyone has any of their own consoling words to add to this thread, that would be great
