A Grief Observed

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid, The same fluttering in the stomache, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep swallowing..."

         In CS Lewis' A Grief Observed, he vividly describes the doubt, pain and rage he experiences while grieving the death of his wife. 

The thing that really struck me while reading this book, was how much he struggled with his faith. After his wife passed away, he went through this period where everything he once knew seemed to change. He began to question a God who he once claimed was the reason for all existence. Throughout the first two chapters of the book, he struggles to make sense of anything that has happened, continually asking "why?"

"Because she is in God's hands. But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then maybe He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it...

    Sometimes it is hard to say, "God forgive God." Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn't. He crucified Him."

This part of the chapter really made me think. Lewis does not present the idea that there is a nonexistent God, but rather the idea that there is a God who turns from us when we need Him most. 

This is were faith truly comes in. Sometimes the hardest thing is believing that He is with us when we feel Him the least.