I carry it with me

I chickened out of posting this last week, lets try this again.


All of a sudden the need to write hit me like a ton of bricks.

I never know when this sudden need to write will pop up.

I have come to recognize that when it does it is usually something deep, something that I don't share with many.

So, tonight, I am going with it.

I don't know what the purpose of dragging these thoughts and feelings out is, but when it happens I feel led by the Spirit to share.

Out of the blue this evening I was suddenly made aware of my two differing ways in which I think of my grief.

My grief is like a glassy smooth frozen lake.

On the surface things can appear calm and under control but when you come to a weak point in the ice there is a possibility of falling through to the freezing, overwhelming water.

There are times that I can acknowledge our losses.

I can talk about them, share my experiences and leave it at that.

Then I fold those feelings away nicely and neatly and place them back into a pocket that I hold almost secretly in my heart.

You see, I know that people say to "Get over it."

But those feelings of hurt, shock, anger and disbelief over all that was gone through still remain, dormant.
I slipped into survival mode during it all..
I went through it, felt it, survived it and moved past it.
Well, moved past it as much as you can move past something like that.
Those feelings were still there though.

Almost biding their time for something to bring them to light.

That something, that mystical thing can really be anything.
Maybe it's hearing the Beatle's song Yesterday when least expecting it.

I had that song on repeat after Emma died.

Maybe it's suddenly remembering how old someone should be but they're not.

Maybe it's when my child asks me about Heaven and who will be there.

Whatever that "it" factor is for me, I know that my grief is still waiting.

No longer the surprisingly overwhelming  grief that hurts so bad that your breath is taken away.

No.

Now it has settled into a comfortable piece of me that sometimes is forgotten.

Like that birthmark on your leg that you don't think about.

It has moulded me and shaped me into who I am today.

There can be no separation of the two.

I wouldn't be me without those experiences.

Sometimes though they feel as though they are a million miles away, they are some bad dream, something that I once read about.

Not something that happened a few years ago.

They have shaped me, my husband, our marriage, our family.

Do I wish the losses away?

No.

I learned more about who I am, what I am made of, who my husband is and more importantly how loved I am by my Savior than I could have ever have hoped to have learned.

Sometimes life lessons suck.

Sometimes they are hard and they change you.