A Liturgy for the Anniversary of a Loss

I have felt its approach in the back of my mind,

like a burden tilting toward me

across the calendar. I have felt its

long approach, and now it has arrived.

This is the day that marks

the anniversary of my loss,

and waking to it,

I must drink again

from the stream of a sorrow

that cannot be fully remedied 

in this life.

O Christ, redeem this day.

I do not ask that these

lingers of grief be erased,

but that the fingers of your grace

would work this memory as a baker

kneads a dough, till the leaven of

rising hope transforms it from within,

into a form holding now in that same

sorrow the surety of your presence,

so that when I look again at that loss,

I see you in the deepest gloom of it,

weeping with me,

even as I hear you whispering,

that this is not the end, but only the still

grey of the dawn before the world begins.

And if that is so, then let that which broke me

upon this day in the past year,

now be seen as the beginning 

of my remaking into a Christ-follower

more sympathetic,

more compassionate,

more conscious

of my frailty and of my daily dependence 

upon you; as one more invested in

the hope of the resurrection of the body

and the return of the King,

than ever I had been before. 

Let this loss-hollowed day 

arrive in years to come

as the kindling of a fire in my bones,

spurring me to seek in this short life

that which is eternal. 

Let this past wound, and the memory of it,

push me to be present with you

in ways that I was not before.

Do not waste my greatest sorrows, O God,

but use them to teach me to live

in your presence--fully alive

to pain and joy and sorrow and hope--

in the places where my shattering

and your shaping

meet.

DK McKelvey