C.S. Lewis and grief

As I go through this online bible study using the book Threads of Hope, Pieces of Joy - if you've experienced a loss of a child through miscarriage or shortly thereafter, you NEED this book (it's one of the few books that has really given me comfort and helped me deal) - anyway, as I go through this book, it quotes a lot from C.S. Lewis.  And then yesterday, someone also posted a quote by him in response to one of my blog entries.

I can understand why.  If you don't know anything about the later years of C.S. Lewis' life, you need to watch the movie Shadowlands. Here's a snopsis of the movie I took off a webpage... "The story follows Lewis as he meets an American fan, Joy Gresham, whom he befriends and eventually marries. The story also deals with his struggle with personal pain and grief: Lewis preaches that one should endure suffering with patience, but finds that the simple answers he had preached no longer apply when Joy becomes afflicted with cancer and eventually dies."

C.S. Lewis knows grief.  And so we get such profound quotes from him like the following...

"I live each day thinking about living each day in grief"  - at first, after a loss, that is how life feels

"When I lay these questions before God I get no answer.  But a rather special sort of 'no answer'.  It is not the locked door.  It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.  As though He shook His head not in refusal but in waiving the question.  Like, 'Peace, Child; you don't understand."      

I like this quote because after a loss you quickly realize, this is really all you're ever going to get from God in response to the "why" question.

Then this is the one that a fellow blogger posted... She's currently reading, Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman (a woman who, if you know her story, also understands grief) and she quotes C.S. Lewis:

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."

That quote really embodies where I am right now.  Having TTCd like crazy the previous week, I'm hoping for a BFP in October.  TTC = trying to conceive and BFP = big fat positive  Sorry for all the abreviations; the babycenter message boards have done it to me ;-)

Anyway, I don't doubt God's best for me in my life, but I want this baby.  And so, I don't want another loss to be what's best for me right now.

Does that make sense?

Well, I just love these quotes from C.S. Lewis, so I'll end with this final one I found online...

"Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal."

So, deal or no deal?  I choose... deal. :-)