By Annie Downs
Joe was my grandfather’s first cousin. He and his wife, Earlene, were like another set of parents to my mom as she grew up.
They had one son, who died tragically the same week I was born. To honor their loss and their relationship with my mom, my parents made them my godparents.
We saw them a few times a year for my whole life. They even let me ride with them across the country once, from Louisiana to Wyoming, when I was in the eighth grade, sealing a special place in my heart forever. (Because anyone brave enough to road-trip with a middle schooler deserves major props.)
Joe was absolutely one of my favorite family members.
I sat in his room a few days before cancer took his life and told him all about what I had been teaching at conferences, what I was studying and writing. It was the week of Thanksgiving, and the day after I returned to Nashville, I was in the car again, headed back to Georgia for his funeral.
During the service, the pastor read a quote my godfather had shared with him. He said it quickly, but it caught my attention immediately because he said it was a quote from a Scottish guy. I made a mental note to ask him for a copy of it before the day was out.
Southern funerals, you may know, are terribly sad occasions but with incredibly delicious luncheons afterward, as was the case for my godfather Joe. The church fed us with their homemade fare: fried chicken and casseroles and potato salad and multiple types of cake.
If any of it was bought in a store, they sure tricked my professional Southern eye. I think it was all made in kitchens with love. Southern women cook like that.
Toward the end of the luncheon, I stopped the pastor and asked if I could get that quote from him. He kindly walked me across the church gym to where he had stashed his notes.
The quote was from an old, old poem about the Scottish pirate Sir Andrew Barton. During one of his pirate battles, Barton is believed to have said:
I am hurt but I am not slain.
I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile,
Then I’ll rise and fight again.
And that was the phrase I repeated that day for two and a half hours driving back to Nashville.
Because it was how I felt. It wasn’t like the past spring, when I’d felt like my life was numb with pain. This pain felt purposeful. It felt like God was letting me hurt and experience loss because this was making space for something.
When two people leave your life in a short amount of time, you grieve and ask questions. When it’s more than a handful of people in fewer than three months, you grieve and see God. You see the emptiness purposefully.
After returning home from the funeral, I went to dinner at Andrew and Alison’s—the Osengas. Sadie was practicing cartwheels, Charlotte was plinking away on the piano like a five-year-old loves to do.
Their oldest daughter, Ella, eleven years old, does incredibly beautiful hand lettering. So after dinner, I told her I’d heard these poetic lines that day and wondered if I could pay her to write them for me.
I asked how much it would cost, and at the same time I offered her twenty dollars, she said, “Two dollars.” Her parents and I cracked up. We met in the middle and I paid her ten. And now on my refrigerator hangs a simple piece of paper with these three lines beautifully printed:
I am hurt but I am not slain.
I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile,
Then I’ll rise and fight again.
I was feeling very alone at that time, pretty worried, and somewhat abandoned. I knew it was okay to lie down and cry about this, but also I had to get back up again. I was gripping as tightly as I could to what I knew about God and what it looked like to be fully persuaded.
ANNIE F. DOWNS (@anniefdowns) is a best-selling author, speaker, and podcaster based in Nashville, Tennessee.
Adapted with permission from Remember God by Annie F. Downs. Copyright 2018, B&H Publishing Group.
