Keeping the end in view

A friend has chided me for proclaiming my allergy to self-help books, while I simultaneously read personal accounts of grief. So perhaps it's more about my perception of self-help books - the prejudice that they proceed from philosophies of self-improvement that are alien to my way of thinking. Now I must say the books that analyse grief in general have sometimes been helpful yet limited, while I've found Christian accounts of dealing with grief to be far more powerful and instructive, without being all prescription.

I've now finished "A Grief Observed", and again was reminded of something missing from my thoughts about what it would mean to see Jen again. Lewis writes:

That's what's really wrong with all these popular pictures of happy re-unions 'on the further shore'; not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End.

Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not?

All that is promised is the central and important goal of being with Christ, and if my love for Jen took my focus away from what really matters, it would be a hindrance, and not the reflection of God's love that it should be. It's so different now from when she was alive, when Jen herself could point me to Christ, but it still remains true. I'm not sure I agree with Lewis's last idea -- it still seems to me that if there is something truly good in our love for another person, that good should be somehow preserved and transformed, even if we one day see it only as a poor reflection of something better.

Yes, I want to keep my eyes on the goal, but also know that the goal of being with Christ is not to be reduced to some bare proposition, but must surely encompass in a rich way the highest good in everything that we have been through.