The Anchor

Last year came with a lot of firsts for me. The first time we have closed our perpetual adoration chapel in 34 years at our home parish. The first time we couldn’t go to mass in person in over a century—a new disease with no predictability. Quarantine and mask-wearing are a normal routine for a large number of the friends and family that I love. Asking for hugs before giving them another first that I’m so not used to as a hugger raised in the south. We have had lots of things we had to trust and watch play out, not a fan as a type-A personality. But if you lost someone you have loved this year, nothing compares to any of these firsts.

The first Thanksgiving or Christmas without your child, mother, father, spouse, sister, brother, or fill in the blank. A birthday or an anniversary that may have passed that has just taken your breath away. Or saying goodbye through the phone, or not at all. The darkness of this pandemic has put a dark cloud on some families that are still almost 1 year impossible to begin to process through.

Not knowing what to expect or how grief will play out can cause many unsettlings in your heart. Whether you are new to grief or in a new season of grief, we can become unsettled for fear of the unknown. We need a means to an end, and with grief, there just isn’t one that we can come to a conclusion with.

Today’s world looks so different than when I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. Where going to a store or the mall was just another day in paradise. That is not a reality today. There are riots in big cities. Shootings at our local mall and civil unrest in places we never thought possible.

We do not know who we can trust, let alone with our pain, and vulnerability is so hard. We struggle even to say the word v-v-v-vulnerability. It doesn’t even roll off of our tongues well. Saying it is a chore, but living in vulnerability is beyond us. As a new griever, you may be asking yourself, where do we go from here?

For so many of us, we have been hurt by friends, family, medical professionals, or anyone who we thought had our best interest at heart. Learning to trust in grief and share authentically can cause the emotion of unrest and anxiousness in our already troubled hearts. Share our story out loud can cause a full-blown panic attack. We know this is real.

As grievers, we need to tread water lightly and disconnect from the stressors of what causes further anxiety, stress, fear, and a trigger for some time, but sometimes it is hard to detach completely. Especially when the source of our triggers comes from those we love the most.

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As Christians, we are called to live our lives in pursuit and belief in hope. But in times when we are living in darkness or during trials, it’s hard to stay steadfast in what we know to be true when we are being tossed around the stormy sea. The Church teaches that we are Easter people, but sometimes we can forget that with Easter comes Good Friday. It’s not possible to separate the two. Living in suffering is hard to manage. So, we must have an anchor to drop when the storm comes—our own personal Good Friday.

From the Hebrews' epistle, Paul talks about God swearing an oath in today's first reading. When a person swore an oath, it meant that they were bound, irrevocably held to the promise they were making. An oath is a badge of honor that what I am saying yes to is true, and I will live up to. But as we all know, man has failed us more than once. Hence Judas dined with Jesus at the last supper and is waiting to dine with you. Jesus, however, keeps his promises, even when the price to pay is so great. We must trust the Lord with our suffering.

Paul talks about how God swore an oath to take care of us. He uses this image that God was an anchor for our soul. A man can swear and take an oath then lie; God can't lie. He always keeps His word.

“…IN WHICH IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD TO LIE, WE WHO HAVE TAKEN REFUGE MIGHT BE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO THE HOPE THAT LIES BEFORE US.” HEBREWS 6:18-19

While we pray that the world would be converted and that evil will be brought to the light, we can trust and hold fast in the hope that is before us. “This we have as an anchor of the soul…” In the midst of the storms and struggles of our life, we have an anchor that we can drop when the seas become turbulent. This anchor is God.

In ancient times sailors would travel close to shore. Not where you could see the shore in the shallow waters, and not so far into the Mediterannean where storms were likely to happen. This was a balancing act and awareness from the sailor. This awareness gave them perspective and directive on the path that their ship must remain to prevent shipwreck.

During darkness, there was a way to measure the ocean's depth and the shore's distance by measuring the fathoms. Fathoms are a unit of length equal to six feet to measure the depth of the water. This was a safety protocol, a defense mechanism that would protect their path to remain on course. If it starts to become shallow, they will drop their anchor, preventing them from a shipwreck. This would secure the ship until daylight, when they could then see the path again. Even in the darkness, you could stay on the same path if you had a plan and a wise captain of your ship. In the depths of our hearts, there is God. He is that captain.

While we can’t measure grief or suffering, we can look to those who are further ahead on their grief journey. It is a mystery that the waves of grief begin to move farther away from one another as healing and restoration happen. This is when Jesus the Divine Physician begins to heal parts of your soul. He restores all of the holes in your deck.

Just like the ship, we, too, have an anchor to our soul. God makes promises He keeps. He promises that He will take care of us and be with us in our suffering. He is our refuge. He saves us from the raging waters. When we are lost in the darkness, we must drop our anchor. If we hold fast to God’s promises, it’s an anchor to peace and calm for our souls so that we aren’t tossed about anxious and loss.

By living a Sacramental life in grace, we can move through the darkness with the illumination of God’s path for us. And if we can’t see or feel anxious, we can drop our anchor, and God will take care of us.