There are some people who become extremely efficient in a crisis. The house could be on fire, the roof collapsing, and they can calmly ask, “Has anyone turned off the coffee machine?” Every family seems to have one. At a funeral, while everyone else is crying, this person is locating the cemetery paperwork, counting sandwiches, finding the missing uncle, checking who needs a ride from the airport, and asking whether the visiting priest has been given lunch.
The same thing happens in ordinary crises. A relationship is struggling, a parent is sick, a child is in trouble, or someone has just received terrible news, but the person is concerned about the groceries that have to be bought, the dog that has to be taken out, the bills that have to be paid. Sometimes we mistake this competence for strength. We say, “Look at her. She is holding up beautifully.” Or He is handling it so well.” But occasionally “holding up beautifully” or handling so well simply means that the heart has not yet been given a safe moment to fall apart or to grieve.
A Light Goes Out
God calls Ezekiel’s wife “the delight of his eyes.” That little phrase changes everything. Scripture tells us almost nothing about her. We do not even know her name. Yet those four words allow us to glimpse an entire marriage. She was not merely “the prophet’s wife.” Ezekiel was a priest living in exile among displaced Judeans in Babylon, carrying an exhausting ministry of warning people who were not especially eager to hear him. One can imagine the person waiting at home after another unsuccessful day of prophecy. Everybody else knew Ezekiel as “that strange prophet.” She knew where he kept his sandals.
Then she dies. And Ezekiel is told not to perform the customary public signs of mourning. In the ancient world, grief was anything but discreet. Mourning could involve lamentation, torn clothing, ashes, uncovered hair, special foods, and even professional mourners. Grief had rituals because grief was understood to need somewhere to go. Abraham mourns Sarah. David weeps for his beloved friend Absalom. Jeremiah is practically a one-man department of tears. Jesus himself weeps at Lazarus’ tomb. And Ezekiel is told: none of it.
At the very moment Ezekiel loses “the delight of his eyes,” Jerusalem is under siege. The Temple, the delight of Israel’s eyes, the place they assumed could never disappear, is about to be destroyed. Ezekiel’s private catastrophe becomes a sign of a national catastrophe so overwhelming that ordinary mourning will hardly be possible. The exiles will lose their sanctuary, homeland, relatives, security, and the world that told them who they were.
Grief Points to Great Love
There are losses for which we cry. And then there are losses so enormous that, for a while, we cannot. Most of us know something of this kind of grief. Life does not always give us the luxury of falling apart when the heart is ready to fall apart. We keep moving because we have to. And sometimes that is courage. But sometimes, after the crisis has passed, we discover that we never really stopped to ask what the loss did to us. Ezekiel is not being taught to become emotionless. His silence becomes a sign of a people who are about to experience a loss too enormous for words.
Perhaps this is why Jesus says, “Blessed are they who mourn.” Mourning is not weakness. It is the heart refusing to pretend that something precious meant nothing. We grieve because we loved. We grieve because a person mattered, a relationship mattered, a dream mattered, faith mattered. Tears are sometimes the price we pay for having allowed something or someone to become “the delight of our eyes.”
So when someone says, “She is holding up beautifully,” perhaps we should admire the courage, but also leave room for the day when she no longer has to hold up quite so beautifully. So perhaps the question Ezekiel leaves us with today is What have I learned to live without that I should still be grieving?
