My aching heart: can pain be redeemed?

A young friend who lost her twenty something brother earlier this year posted a comment on Facebook this week about aching to be with him.

I sent her a comment and my thought that our aching and longing to be with those we have lost run as deep as our love for them does, and this phrase has been swirling in my head ever sense.

I still ache for Daniel and long to be with him.  This aching seems to be a permanent reality of life for me now as a father.

In other posts on this blog I have explored the longing I felt to be Daniel as if there is a perpetual magnet pulling me toward this person and my desire to be with him.

I believe that God gives us deep relational needs and when relationships are interrupted or severed by absence, a gaping hole is left in our hearts that in some respects will probably never be filled again.

And so we ache, acutely aware of our hole ridden and broken hearts and the pain we feel over the person we miss.

Can this pain and the aching that it causes also be redeemed?

God:  please continue to redeem my pain.