I can still Dance: Because a Highschool Teacher Showed me how

 

The Funerals No One Sees

(A reflection on the graves we carry, the courage to share our wounds, and the faith that still dances)

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me...”
Psalm 23:4 

There are some words that sit quietly inside of us for years.

Not because we do not believe them.
Not because they do not matter.
But because they came from places too deep to easily explain.

Sometimes the hardest things to share are not the moments when we broke down in front of everyone. It is the things that broke inside where nobody could see.

This is one of those thoughts.

I wrote this a long time ago, but I never had the courage to share it. It sat quietly, like so many things we carry, waiting for the moment when I was ready to let someone else see it.

Maybe that is because some truths feel too vulnerable when they are still close to the wound.

But sometimes God takes the very thing we tried to hide and turns it into something that can help someone else know they are not alone.

There are funerals that happen years before the coffin.

The day trust dies.
The day innocence is buried.
The day love leaves without saying goodbye.
The day hope becomes a word we are afraid to say.

These are the funerals nobody attends.

There are no flowers.
No funeral home.
No obituary.
No gathering of people telling stories.

Yet somehow, we know exactly where those graves are.

Because we carry them.

We carry the memory of the moment something changed.
The conversation that broke something.
The loss that altered us.
The disappointment that made us build walls around places that used to be open.

We walk among the living while quietly mourning pieces of ourselves that nobody else even knew existed.

And maybe that is one of the loneliest parts of being human.

People see the person standing in front of them.

They do not always see the graveyard underneath.

But here is where the story changes.

Because faith was never meant for people who have never known loss.

Faith was not created for perfect days, easy roads, and lives untouched by pain.

Faith was born in the darkness.

It was found in the valley.

It was carried through storms, through tears, through nights when the only thing left to hold onto was the promise that God was still there.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Psalm 30:5

Notice what Scripture does not say.

It does not say there is no weeping.

It does not say there are no nights.

It says the night does not get the final word.

The grave does not get the final word.

The broken moment does not get the final word.

So somewhere between the ashes of what was lost and the hope of what is coming, something unexpected begins to happen.

The soul begins to dance.

Not because the pain was imaginary.

Not because the scars disappeared.

Not because the funerals never happened.

But because the One who entered the grave walked out of it.

Because Christ did not promise us a life without valleys.

He promised to walk through them with us.

The world may look at our scars and see evidence of what defeated us.

God looks at them and sees evidence that we survived what was meant to destroy us.

So let time take what it takes.

Let the earth gather its dust.

Let yesterday keep its memories.

Because those who belong to Christ do not dance because they escaped the night.

They dance because they know the night was never the end of the story.

Maybe that is why I finally felt the courage to share these words.

Because someone else may be standing beside one of those unseen graves today.

Someone else may be carrying a funeral nobody knows about.

Someone else may think the story ended when something inside of them died.

But it didn't.

The God who brings life from dust, who brings hope from ashes, and who turns mourning into dancing is still writing.

And the last chapter has not been written yet.

“Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness.”
Psalm 30:11

The grave may remember what was lost.

But God remembers what He is restoring.

                                                                                          ~~jhf

                                                                            (Inspired by a Highschool Teacher)