processing grief through allegory – Me Ra Koh

If you’re going through a painful season, I pray this gives you comfort. Sometimes it’s easier for me to write in allegory when my heart is in the midst of processing grief. A lot of my first book, Beauty Restored, is written in allegory. Sometimes heartbreak is too overwhelming to put concrete thoughts into words. This poured out of me recently, and Brian encouraged me to share it with you. He felt like you might benefit from reading this as well. I pray these words are like a healing salve for whatever pain you are facing and that your spirit would see the mountain and sea waving at you too.

Baptized by Mystery

Unexpected pain hit my heart leaving me turned upside down, spinning, reeling.

So I ran to the mountains where I feel small and GLORY is big, surrounding me, standing tall.

I saw where the ice melts and becomes a course of life, cascading through the snow, babbling along the meadow brook, dancing all the way to the valley.

I followed the river’s song, her laughter, to the sea where a ferry carried me and all my baggage, taking me in peace to where a new path began.

We walked through the wooded blackberry bramble, overgrown grass and maple trees, a path cut for us. Shalom beside me.

Our words meandered like the wandering path, both of us holding sorrow, grief and hope for the other. The shadow of the valley of death a little less cold and lonely being by each other’s side.

She talked of an old dream becoming new again. I stopped, looked at her, and began to weep.

Shalom was dreaming again. After a year of surrendering, facing Stage 4, a dream was growing and multiplying within her, like her Lion’s main mushrooms. Detoxing, healing, treating all the fear, ever so humbly. How fragile this dream, planted in the valley. Oh but the soil in the valley!

Oh my heart, THIS is Mystery to me!

Dappled sunlight led the way and under the arch of the bramble we came upon a deer. She stopped, stood tall, curious, then darted away inviting us to follow.

The path opened up to the blue sea, where the ice-cold babbling glaciers meet.

I walked into the waters, my toes shocked by its icy touch.

Yet I couldn’t help but go farther and farther into the deep, even though my breath hitched, my heart pounding.

I still felt pulled into the deep. To plunge myself fully, into the crystal clear cold, every cell in my body ringing,

life screaming and singing,

plunging deeper where thoughts, feelings and all the noise are startled away.

Gone all at once until the pain, the unexpected pain I carried from home, was finally baptized.

And I began to weep.

My whole body shook not from the cold but the release.

My tears adding to the salt in the sea.

Oh, how they held me, the clear, cold waters that ran off the mountain’s ledge, finally surrounding me in the deep.

I thought of being a young girl and my grandpa who always dove into the glacier lake with perfect form, chest out, toes pointed, late in his 60s. He’d call out to me to jump off the dock, and we’d play until the sun went down.

Even in the moonlight, we sometimes played in the glacier lake, hiding under the dock, teasing my younger brothers, giggling, no longer cold but wrapped in adventure.

Did you teach me to expect joy and wonder in the dark?

Is that why my bones feel like they sing in Mystery?

I wept in the sea today, thankful to be alive, thankful for the pain being baptized, thankful for my friend’s first dream in the valley, thankful to be in the deep.

And the mountain…she stood tall in the distance waving to me.

Hand in hand with the sea.

Always here for me, when I need to feel small again.

Surrounded.

Held.

Baptized in Mystery.

8/1/2024

There is a deeper purpose to me sharing this with you. Maybe you are reading this because we’ve known each other for decades, first meeting here when our children were little and photography was new. My heart reaches through this screen to hug you. Or maybe a friend forwarded this to you. Processing grief through allegory is often easier for me. But there is more. At times when I’ve experienced heartbreak, there is this darkness that starts to creep, little by little taking my voice. It’s so subtle at first that I don’t always realize it’s even happening.

The way of pain is often isolating. Breaking through the isolation is often the first battle I face. A dear friend reminded me the other day that my voice is everything. The voice that stands up and shares stories of hope and freedom, resilience and healing. There is power in that voice, my voice. I’m thankful for her words.

This morning as I was praying about the day, I asked myself ‘What is one thing I can do today to get my voice back despite the pain?’ Sharing this with you, unedited, in raw form, came to me.

What is one thing each of us can do today to get our voice back despite the pain?

It’s a beautiful question. The journey to the answer is often a pilgrimage. Even though we’re not together physically, my heart is walking alongside you.

still we rise,

Me Ra

p. s. If you’d like, I’ll post some stories today on my instagram of the mountain, sea and the deer we met in the bramble.

p.s.s. Love you Shalom and Anna