Grieving H.

"No one ever told me grief felt so like fear."
The poison, paralyzing me here.
And now am I building card houses just to please my own muses?
What would she say, if she turned this way?

She was the Joy. Oh, God, help me to love You
for taking her home into Your arms.
She was the Joy, but I'm looking for You.
If I scream, let it do me no harm.

Will You go on cutting?
The Surgeon's knife is something to be feared.
Well, I'm afraid. Afraid that You Love me too dear!
You crucified Your Own Son. I know You won't spare me what I need
or what I've learned.
I've learned that You crucified Your Own Son
so You could spare me what I have earned. what I have earned.

She was the Joy. Oh, God, help me to love You
for taking her (taking her) out of my arms.
She was the Joy but I'm looking for You.
If I scream let it do me no harm.
She was the Joy. You gave and You took her away.
She was the Joy that made me come near to You,
and You have surprised me today.





I've only had one or two chances to perform this song, both times with my brother Will, who also has a deep emotional bind to it. These are all ideas adapted from the most passionate and soulful book I've ever read, a very short autobiography of C.S. Lewis that was so personal to him that he wouldn't let it be published under his real name until after he'd passed away. I used to hope that people would be interested in the song enough to take a few seconds out of their day to research it and find out what it was about. It wouldn't have been hard. If they had researched the first line of the song they would find that it is, word for word, the first line of the book. But to the best of my knowledge nobody ever did find it out on their own, so I lost quite a bit of faith in humanity. It destroyed a little bit of my naivety I suppose. It was about losing his wonderful wife to cancer. (No, it's not like A Walk to Remember. For one thing, they were both over fifty when they got married.) If you want to know the details, I highly recommend you read the book. It's very short. I am still naive enough I guess to suppose that my fervent supplication will motivate somebody out there to pick up this incredible journal. You'll also want to read about the situation from some other source, because C.S. Lewis intentionally wrote the book so that readers would not guess that it was from him. That's why he gave his love the ambiguous title, H.
One of the most emotional parts of the book for me is the part I adapted in the second verse, the part about the Surgeon and His knife. Here is the idea. Lewis is questioning whether God might be a Great Sadist instead of a Great Healer. Yes, even C.S. Lewis was struggling so much over the death of his wife that he committed this blasphemous thought. But he was being honest.
Here's the terrifying thought that he comes to. If God was a Sadist, then probably at some point he would grow weary of torturing his creations.
But if God is not a Sadist, if instead He Is the Great Healer, the Great Surgeon, if He Is cutting us open for our own good, then we have no hope of reprieve. If by the surgery He Is saving our souls, then we have no guarantee that the bodily torture will stop anytime soon. Out of this idea comes probably my most favorite quote of all time from C.S. Lewis:
"What do people mean when they say, 'I don't fear God, because I know He Is Good?' Have they never been to a dentist?"

So that's what the second verse is all about. I'm afraid that God Loves me too dearly. It's because He Loves me that He continues to cut me.
Now understand, I am really a wimp. God has not been truly brutal to me in any way. I've actually been incredibly blessed all my life. But nevertheless I relate to everything C.S. Lewis is saying here.

The rest of the song will be easily related to the book if you pick it up and read it (one more time I must highly recommend that you do). It takes less than two hours to read the whole thing from cover to cover.

I will mention one more thing. I did a little play on words. I enjoy plays on words. Probably nobody would catch it if I didn't point it out, which would be ok. But anyways.
"You gave and You took her away."
Of course, this is a rendition of the old adage, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away." This has a very settled meaning. But in the context of the song, the way the grammar works, you could interpret it the old way but you could also interpret it so that the phrase "her away" is connected to the phrase "You gave" as well as "You took." I bet that's confusing. What I'm meaning to say is this. If "her away" is applied to "You gave," then you get a different picture. "You gave her away." You know, like at a wedding. The Father gives His daughter away. If you still don't understand, don't sweat it. It's not even worth spending this paragraph on to explain a little play on words.