Waves of Grief

Isaiah 51:15 New International Version (NIV)

15  For I am the Lord your God,

    who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—

    the Lord Almighty is his name.

Crashing waves recede and reveal a mix of color across the otherwise colorless sand. The shoreline changes with the ebb and flow of each wave. A beach altered by the power of the sea and circumstances of the past.

On April 18,1906 an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.9 destroyed over 80% of San Francisco and its impact was felt along the California coast. The small coastal town of Fort Bragg dumped the remnants of the destruction into the ocean. In the following years bottles, taillights, TVs, continued to be dumped into the ocean. The power of the ocean worked to transform the broken glass into something new. Waves smoothed the sharp edges and changed the texture of each broken piece.

Today tourists walk along an area known as Glass Beach which is covered with broken glass in its transformed form. What was formally broken and discarded has been transformed into something beautiful with a new purpose. In the hands of an artist, each piece of broken glass is now combined to create new pieces of art together.

When I lost my son, I wondered how long it would take to get back to being my old self. That was a mistake. Mourning is not a process of getting back to your old self. Loss will change you. Mourning is a process of being transformed by each crashing wave of grief. The same God that stirs up the sea has the power to transform you. Just as the broken glass is transformed into something new, God can use the broken in new ways.