The Healing Journey

October 27, 2024

In her book, “The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief,” Jan Richardson, who is a writer, artist and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, recounts a tragedy that tore her life apart:

“It did not go as we anticipated. At 4 a.m., the neurosurgeon entered the waiting room where our family had been keeping vigil for my husband. Gary had gone into surgery that afternoon to repair a brain aneurysm discovered several months earlier. He had experienced no symptoms of the aneurysm; it was spotted in the process of checking out something else that proved not to be a problem. How fortunate, we had thought. How providential. The aneurysm had been found; the treatment options were clear and low-risk; life could return to normal, all the more grace for our knowing what a potential disaster we had escaped. The surgeon should have emerged many hours earlier to tell us everything had gone well. Instead, he sat down across from me and said, ‘It did not go as we anticipated. There was a clot; there was a massive stroke.’ Though the surgeon spoke words of hope, hope began to run out in the days that followed. Complications accumulated, then cascaded. Gary never regained consciousness. Nearly three weeks after his initial surgery, just as the season of Advent was beginning, Gary died. We had been married not four years.”

For many years, Richardson has been writing blessings, which she says offer insights into God’s often inscrutable providence, so that we can “perceive the grace that threads through our lives.” A blessing will meet us in our pain and “A blessing helps us to keep breathing—to abide this moment, and the next moment, and the one after that.”

Blessing in the Chaos

By Jan Richardson

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

©Jan Richardson

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