When I think of my grandmother, there aren’t many pictures left that come into my head. She died when I was ten, and ten-years-old is already such a blurry time. Strange how the memories of smell are the strongest. Her life remains tucked away in the most unlikely places. In bolts of fabric folded into closets and chests, waiting to be made into quilts and doll dresses. In biscuit dough kneaded into the lines of your hands, stretched out on the countertop for dinner. In the smell of the furnace beneath the hallway, the hot air warming you on a winter night. 

Most of all, in coffee. She must have drunk two pots a day. The smell never left her house, her clothes, her. My sisters and I took great delight in pouring her a cup, often being sent back to the refrigerator for more creamer.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized the kind of life my grandmother had been given. An abusive father, a sick mother, poverty. An absent husband – absent being the most gracious adjective I could give him. At church this morning, the sermon was on perseverance through suffering. That, too, makes me think of her. 

Hers was a life built upon perseverance, not on perfection. Sometimes I grow sad because I wish I could have understood her better. That even at ten-years-old, I could have crawled into her lap and seen inside her memories. Grieved with her for long years of pain and disappointment. But there are things we can never know as children. Truths that we haven’t yet been given eyes to see.

As an adult, I grieve with her. If only God let me travel to the past, I’d sit on the front porch glider with her. Watch the cars drive past and the poplar tree crisp to yellow. We would drink coffee and talk. I’d try to understand. But I won’t be going back. My life is here and her life was there, and they only intersected for the briefest decade.

The reality is, across geography and time, culture and ethnicity, suffering etches a commonality between us all. It provides a common language, an understanding, that transcends words. Yet somehow, despite the ubiquity of pain we can be so slow to recognize it in one another. And despite our common thread, we can be so fearful of revealing it to one another. As if the admittance of suffering is an admittance of weakness. Of failure. 

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I told the truth. If, when you texted on Monday afternoon, I didn’t just say, I’m fine. What if I was honest? I’m not all right. I’m really not all right.

Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed with not being all right. Sometimes I feel suffocated by my own heartache. The feeling of being stuck in the weeds seems a lot more like being lost in a dark forest. I’ve lost sight of the sun. But the same phrase keeps coming into my mind. The same words over and over. God is sufficient. 

It’s a truth that must be planted inside of us. We can’t manufacture it on our own. I don’t think I even fully believe it yet. Maybe the seed has sprouted but it’s definitely not full-grown. I’m trying to let Him be enough. Trying to see Him for who He really is – sufficient for yesterday, today, and forever.  

As I am here, waiting for tomorrow, I try to think about the future. Not in dreams fulfilled, tears dried, but the Forever Future. The one that really counts. And the more I think on that, on a reality where God is perfectly sufficient, the less frightening my pain becomes. It is no longer a menacing monster, its claws wrapped around the closet door, waiting for the dark. But pain becomes a paintbrush. A tool that is transforming me, enabling me to see Him and the Forever Future more clearly. Giving me enough hope today to persevere for tomorrow. 

Today is Sunday, and our corner of Pittsburgh is blustery with snow. I’ve fired up the Mr. Coffee machine, a hand-me-down from my father-in-law, and brewed a half pot of a medium roast breakfast blend. I’ve fixed my cup with a generous portion of cream, sweet with cinnamon and vanilla. I’ve sat down to write. But my thoughts are filled with the past, as if I’m facing backwards and don’t know how to turn away.

There are certain things in this life that will never make sense. Not that we don’t strive for justice or rightness, but there are wrongs that will never be righted while our feet are still touching soil. My life, like my grandmother’s, will never find perfect happiness here. But maybe that’s the first step – understanding and accepting that life isn’t one giant pursuit of Friday night fun. As Tim Keller said, “Secular culture says the meaning of life is happiness. If that’s the meaning of life then suffering destroys your meaning.”

There has to be more. For me, for you, for those ahead of us, and those behind us. 

It’s hard for me to accept that the empathy I feel for my grandmother now cannot cross the great barrier of time. It cannot reach her. The best I can do is empathize with the ones who are here with me now. But even still – even if we all linked arms, acknowledging within one another the pain that binds us together as humans, it wouldn’t be enough. While I crave your understanding, it isn’t enough to take away the pain. It isn’t enough to make sense of the suffering. 

There has to be more. 

I believe my grandmother’s tears are dried in the Forever Future. That she discovered He was sufficient.

That’ll have to be enough for me.