'Into your hands I commit my spirit' by Sheli Sloterbeek [Holy Week Vigil 2022]

I wept for days. And just when the crushing weight felt like it might reside, it overwhelmed again. In the past, I’d operated under the “pick yourself up and move on” method of life. You know the times when you press forward suppressing all the emotion, all the hurt because it’s easier. But as I wept I felt invited by the Spirit to sit with the grief. To allow myself to feel the deep sadness of her brokenness and our unmet expectations. To not push through to happier days, but sit with the why’s. …

Into the hands of Christ, I commit my sad, angry, frustrated, weeping spirit. Welcome grief.

'Into your hands I commit my spirit' by Andrea Bailey Willits [Retrieve Lament 2021]

Often, the middles and even the endings of our personal stories are tragic. They don’t make any sense, in and of themselves. On Holy Saturday, it looked like Jesus was dead for good. That’s why our personal stories need to be situated in a larger story, the one in which we are always safe because God’s purposes ARE prevailing. The Anglican liturgy has helped me re-saturate my imagination in that story. For me, lament has been cleansing. It required grappling with my idols and laying down lies—and welcoming a life that looks, to many people, like a failure. I place my own little story in the story of the community’s suffering, and I think our suffering Savior is there too.

Into Your Hands, I Commit My Spirit by Kimberly McHugh [Retrieve Lament 2020]

My grandson lived; he lived for 6 ½ years. We got to know him and love him deeply. I spent many hours leaning over a hospital bed, watching him, and praying for him. We exchanged goofy face pics and sweet voice messages from long distances. He called me Nana, and I can still hear his voice saying, Naa naaa’, in his slightly reproachful tone and grinning face, in response to something silly I did. I wear a shirt he loved because it has rhinestones and sequin embroidery and I can still feel his hands tracing the letters of “Istanbul” on my shirt. And then, quite suddenly Yahya died. I stood by my daughter’s side as she and her husband buried his ashes. …

Where is that peace that passes understanding, where are you, God? And I long for what ancients say can come after the wall: to know God’s sweetness and love, to have peace and rest, and a deep inner stillness. I am almost ready again to say, “Into your hands I commend my spirit”, and I believe when I do, I will pass through the wall to a sweeter knowledge of Him.

Into your hands I commit my spirit: Erin Ware [Retrieve Lament 2019]

I kid you not, there was a time, not long before all of this happened, that I thought that “the worst thing that could happen” would be my car breaking down, because I was very financially vulnerable. Then, almost like a joke, my car was stolen, and I couldn’t replace it. (Spoiler alert: I got through it.) The truth is, for most of my life, losing my mom would have been the worst thing that I could imagine—and then that happened too. I don’t want to think about what my “worst thing” would be now. All I know is, through it all, I have come to realize that there is life after death in more ways than one.

Into your hands: Tamara Hill Murphy [Retrieve Lament]

I need resurrection, yes, but I never want to skip the burial because this is where all the old things are laid to rest. Only when they've been completely killed can they be made completely new.

It was during the darkest hour of betrayal, forsaken even by his father and his God, that Jesus said these words, “Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit.” This act marked a final moment of epiphany, as the hardest hearts watching that day replied: “Surely this was the Son of God.”

It was Jesus’ unwavering allegiance to the one true God that caused him to lay his own soul into the only place worthy of its keeping, his Abba Father’s hands. His willingness to suffer the injustices of all the world made a way for me to lay down my own wounded, abused and betrayed self and entrust my whole self to the Abba of Jesus, “Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit."

Retrieve Lament: Natalie Murphy's mourning story

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment a dream officially dies. I know this because I still wake up each morning expecting to find myself living the super excellent fantasy life so clearly laid out in Natalie’s Plan to Be Good at Everything and Take Over the World, Probably. The Dream I once put my whole life’s purpose in is gone, like losing a friend whom I once turned to for comfort every day. The Dream was the one who woke me up and said ‘you can do it! I believe in you!’ Now when I wake up in my twin sized bed in my parents home, with no plan or purpose for the day, the Dream isn’t there to greet me. So I slide out of bed and pour a cup of coffee, my bathrobe hanging from my shoulders like a shawl of disappointment. …

The mourning isn’t over. Actually, I’m unsure if it’s even begun. Instead, I’m left only with a promise of goodness and hope, and a shield from harm. What comes next, I don’t know. But I do know what comes last, I do know the final destination for this nomad heart of mine. And for now, today, that is enough.

Retrieve Lament: from me, the mother

Sometimes love feels fierce as hate-

mingling down in howling tears.

It's hard to tell the difference

Am I crying for my kid?

Am I crying for myself?

Which makes me wonder

What your mother felt the day she cradled

your dead body?

Retrieve Lament: a summary and a poem

Because I know the end of the story,

I have a hard time seeing grief.

It's too easy to skip that day

and say Sunday's coming!

I need to hear middles of stories.

So I can see. Maybe not hear or

see, but feel.

Retrieve Lament: Paul Van Allen (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.)

In God’s mysterious and inexplicable ways he has taken mine and your mother’s broken DNA and woven in an extra copy of the 23rd chromosome into you. The grief that that news brought us has been gradually replaced with expectation of blessing. The stories that surround different boys, girls, men, and women with Down Syndrome that have come our way since your diagnosis have been consistently stories of childlike and irreplaceable joy.

Life has its costs and its benefits and the thing about believing in God is that we look with faith for surpassing blessing. Life is not a zero sum game for those who love God.

Holy Week Lament: Tamara Hill Murphy (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!)

A eulogy to an ex-friend:

I've given up hope for now, but let's put a pin in it

-- until the One holding that first breath of

once-dead for all the coming-alive-again in His

unbloodied mouth

breathes hot life on us in the new city,

the new garden where we get to try again.

Forever.

Holy Week Lament: Tamara Hill Murphy (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!)

Since it's only Saturday, and we haven't yet

really seen the Sunday (haven't beheld him in the clouds),

all we can do now

is hope you'll open your hands

and catch us from the

ground.

tamara hill murphy

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