What’s wrong with just saying, man, that sucks and I am so sorry? I can’t do anything or say anything to make this better for you, but I love you. Why isn’t it okay to just acknowledge that sometimes life isn’t fair and doesn’t make sense and just really bites, without trying to find some shiny side of the pain?
I can’t tell you the amount of restraint it’s taken over the years to keep from throat punching some people over things they’ve said about the loss of my father when I was too young to have lost him. Yes, I know he’s in a better place. Yes, I’m glad he didn’t suffer long. Yes, it’s possible God was saving him from something bad in his life. Yes, I was lucky to have him for the time that I did. I get it. All of it. Really, I do. But quite frankly, that doesn’t help a bit. It never did.
Sometimes we just have holes in our lives. Emptiness that can’t be totally filled. And no amount of platitudes or well-intentioned words of comfort are going to fill those holes.
All my life, I have heard the concept that we all have a God sized hole in our life that we may try to fill with other things like people, alcohol, drugs, material possessions, etc. but can only be ever filled with God. And that always sounded really nice. It doesn’t sound nice to me any more.
It doesn’t sound nice because I don’t think that my God’s purpose is just to fill my holes. God isn’t caulk. God is bigger than any hole. God fills every part of my life, including the parts that are whole rather than holes.
I don’t say this to minimize God’s ability to heal those holes, or to minimize our need for God. I absolutely believe that people have a need for God that won’t be satisfied by anything else. I absolutely believe that God can fill our holes and to make them like they never happened. But to say that God’s job is to fill our holes is, I think, to minimize all that God is. It isn’t that God can’t fill them because God certainly can do that with just a word. But I don’t know that filling those holes is always the purpose. I think that God uses those holes, and what God makes of them, to create something far greater and stronger and more beautiful than what was there before the hole.
And, truthfully, I don’t know why it is that we expect that all the holes in our lives have to be fully repaired. That they have to be filled, or need to be filled, or even are able to be filled. Sometimes we just have holes. The loss of a child, or a parent, or spouse, or a dream, leaves a hole that doesn’t ever fully fill in. These aren’t holes we want. But they are holes we have. And God uses those holes to make us beautiful in ways that we wouldn’t be without them.
Maybe the answer isn’t to expect for those holes to be filled back to where they were before the loss that caused them. Maybe the answer is to allow God to spin tapestries of love and giving and connection that creates a new cover for those holes. A cover that helps to protect what’s underneath as it’s healing but that acknowledges and honors that there’s a hole where there once wasn’t.
Maybe, just maybe, holes are okay, and so are the beautiful covers God makes for them. Maybe we should quit trying to fill those holes up ourselves. We should certainly stop trying to fill them for others. Maybe we should just recognize that they are there. And, if our wounded friends want our help with the weaving of their tapestries, we offer some brightly colored yarn, or fabric, or at times some industrial strength tape. But we should also recognize that sometimes they don’t want or need our help to fill their holes. All they want from us is for us to say yes, I see your holes. They’re awfully big. I’m sorry they’re there. But I’m here to sit with you until you figure out what you want to do about them.
It’s possible to have holes and still be whole. And the tapestry covers that God creates for us, the patchwork masterpiece that he makes out of us, can make us beautiful.
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