God In Our Grief

God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, no sorrow, nor crying. Revelation 21:4

Despite it's universality, when sorrow comes to us, each of us is certain that no one has ever suffered such a keen sense of loss. And it is at that point that we can allow a poisonous self-pity to enter. Anger at God then often quickly follows. 

But when we shut our heart against our friends and family and allow bitterness to creep in, we are, in a tragic way, insulating ourselves against the healing and re-energizing love of God. 

I was saved from such isolation by a miracle of God's grace and by the loving church congregation that surrounded me. I use the word "miracle" because my basic nature has been that of fleeing encounters with people whenever possible. Yet somehow I was strengthened to will myself to return to church the Sunday immediately following Peter's death, to sit in the pastor's pew as usual (though at times during the service I could not stop the tears), and thereafter to open wide the door of our manse-home to a procession of friends.

:: Catherine Marshall

unexpected lull

Sometimes I am so low I don't know how I let myself get here.
I need to sleep, I need to forget, I need to embrace things
By withdrawing I prolong the need, the repetition, the rotation
But there is no rotation, there's a pattern, but it's not moving
It's interesting in these valley's and lull's how bad news links together
And laces through, as imagination and reality race to outdo each other
In bad tiding's, in discomfort, in letters and memories. It just keeps going
Everything rises up and I won't sleep for days while it lays here, heavy on me





my immunity is low, 
I've spent a long time letting it deplete, 
letting you and every lying voice passing and in my head deplete it. 

the substitutes, whether emotional, physical or colorful, aren't replacement's 
they just keep you from feeling alone... Making you more so

of car wrecks and good things

Today, I'm taking more Ibuprofen than my liver should be able to deal with and not for the reason's you might think (by this I only mean headache's.) girl's can take Ibuprofen for many reason's and no one needs to raise their eyebrow's and nod understandingly at me.  The reason is simply this, night before last I, along with my lovely family got in a car accident. It was a minor wreck by most standards, our vehicle was rear ended we went spinning, screaming, jerking around the highway & we are all very aware that if there had been a few slight differences, if the car that hit us had been only a little bigger we would have flipped instead of sliding. But we didn't flip and we are all still  in one piece, for this we are truly thankful.

I personally would like to take this moment to mention seat belts, I had just sat down in my seat as we pulled onto the main highway. I sit on the end of the back seat along with Ben & Jessica, like 3 dominoes we are set up in age and height order leaving me on the end to protect them both...should our van be hit on the back left corner at 55miles per hour, lifted off the ground and spun around Ben will fall on Jessica, Jessica will smash into me (while making a valiant effort to hold Grace firmly down on the seat in front of her.) and I will fall off the seat hit the wall be yanked around and ram into the metal (very hard) on both the seats that I'm now wedged between. This is a fool proof plan to protect the favorite family members. And yes, maybe I would have been safer if my seatbelt had been buckled within 30 seconds of getting on the highway. But I'm prone to think the impact of Benjamin & Jess and the centrifugal force smashing my head into a window while my lower body was strapped to a seat, would have been more damaging than the inflammation, bruising and minor whiplash I am experiencing now. However I recommend that everyone always put your seatbelt on before trusting a moving vehicle... In fact I would further recommend, not trusting a moving vehicle at all.

A few other things of importance happened this weekend.
I am coming to terms with some minor & major life changes, and coming to terms with how much I should accept God's hand in my life. If I truly trust Him I need to also trust that all the details, sequences of events, variations and plan changes, in my well laid plans that I'm daily "surrendering to Him" may very well be His well timed answer to prayer. This does not make me comfortable, but it makes me appreciate the fact that the creator of the universe, very well may sit back with a mild smile on his face and an occasional laugh as He watches me stumble around, trying to believe that He really is exactly as good as I say He is, and His will for me, really is exactly as perfect as I daily say it is.

Also, this weekend specifically, I spent a day with one of the friends I've been closest to the longest. She's a good friend, and I am so thankful to have her's as one of the amazing friendships that makes my life more complete, as we walk that road of friendship that makes good times good and hard times more bearable.
I'm starting to realize why God gave Jonathan to David, we need people in our lives, for laughter as much as accountability, for teaching us to relax and feel accepted as much as for helping keep our hands to the plow and occasionally holding our arms up.

And last but not least, yesterday morning during my Dad's set after HLF's national meeting he performed a new song, for the first time in a long time. I think a part of me had started to fear and feel a little ashamed that since he gave me his guitar years ago, I had somehow taken from him the very thing that he spent my life trying to give me, the gift of writing and self expression.  I felt like by walking on into my own, I was somehow  taking away from his, if that makes sense. However yesterday morning I found it wasn't true.

All of this to say I hope your weekend wasn't quite as full as mine. And though I don't care about the football game the rest of you may have been worshiping, I will say I will always love Pennsylvania.

It's better to have loved and lost?

So, I'm not okay...

Tonight, I am nothing. I have everyone I need & I love them, but at least one person I want I will never have now because I'm not sure that I will ever want him again. The question that's been plaguing me lately is why I loved in the first place, and more pertinent, why am I still pretty sure that the things bordering on hate in me may prove how much I still love.

Maybe I found a truer answer than I want to admit...
The other day I stumbled across a quote on my friends facebook. Unlike the long list on my page, while I'm always wanting to add another judging by the hundreds of quotes on napkins in my pockets... She doesn't have this problem, It's the only one under her favorite quotations,

"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Maybe she only needs one, it explains a lot. Enough even.

I have to admit I've never been fully satisfied with that quote, I haven't liked it as much as I should.
But that's probably due to a strong desire not to be okay with losing things I love. That may be unhealthy but I really think it's just based in loving "too much" and being a little selfish about it. Not wanting to allow the things I love or have loved to move away from me, to die, to stop loving me, to not want me, to forget me.

I don't know if it's worse to think that someone cannot love you anymore or simply that they won't. They've chosen to stop (if you really loved to begin with I'm not sure how this works).  I don't know how to take it when I say I love you and someone says "well, I don't love you." in all seriousness.
 I started shaking, my insides felt like they were a million pieces coming apart & shifting into tears into bewildered thoughts into shaking hands a trembling, still beating heart and a horrible, unending, sinking feeling in my stomach. Someone else can hold me still to stop the shaking and eventually the tears dry, but no one can change, or help, or stop what's inside me now. The brokenness stretches out, the lights get darker, all the magnified sounds, the words in slow motion, that montage of memories like a  life flashing before your eyes, everything is acute and dull in an instant and then that instant stretches out for weeks & months and a few years... eventually you'll heal. We will all eventually experience losing something or someone to death and most of us will also lose someone right  in the midst of  life. Probably as you lose them and come to terms with it, you will stat to feel everything again, you'll remember how deep the happiness was, how perfect their adoration for you, how you followed their every word, loved their voice, believed in them and sometimes believed that it really couldn't get much better than this. There are different types of love, but somethings about love are the same. The things at the core. Maybe you, like me, lost a boy, maybe a girl, a brother, a sister, maybe it was a Mother or your Daddy, your Grandparents, your Uncle or your Dog, whoever it was... Loss is Loss, and Love is Love.

And I think I'm starting to think maybe that quote is enough to almost complete all thoughts and feelings on the matter. Once you've loved you are changed, and no matter how it's lost, it has touched you & you will never be the same again. That love will stay with you and somehow, you will always one way or another be better. You can get better if you let it run it's course and that part of love, that part of your life, will help make the complete you. Whoever that is. It is better to have loved and lost...

Maybe there's room for another quote,
"Nothing touches our lives but it is God Himself speaking."  
Or "It all happens for a reason, even when it's wrong... Especially when it's wrong"
Okay, I've emptied my pockets of quotes for the night & my racing mind. I'll leave you with it.

Most of this seemed true

Advice from Somewhere

28/01/2011

1. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
2. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
3. Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
4. When you say, “I love you,” mean it.
5. When you say, “I’m sorry,” look the person in the eye.
6. Be engaged at least six months before you get married
7. Believe in love at first sight.
8. Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much.
9. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it’s the only way to live life completely.
10. In disagreements, fight fairly. Please No name calling.
11. Don’t judge people by their relatives.
12. Talk slowly but think quickly.
13. When someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, smile and ask, “Why do you want to know?”
14. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
15. Say “bless you” when you hear someone sneeze.
16. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
17. Remember the three R’s: Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.
18. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
19. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
20. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.
21. Spend some time alone.

I talk about change as if I embraced it. Excitement about doing new things, the plans & the well laid hopes of what's next and what's beginning. But even as all these false advertisements pour through my system and out of my mouth I know the truth. Change is never comfortable or without a level of pain(in adjustment, in growing pains). Even the smoothest of transitions leave some sort of residue whether that's worked out now or hereafter depends on our skills, our ability to cope, our methods of survival.

Some of us are half healthy and sometimes those healthy parts are the visible ones. Some of us keep the unhealthy half that never learned how to adjust to anything, hidden behind the side that has spent her whole life trying to excel to keep everyone from noticing.  This only works well for awhile, eventually you break down, thankfully this usually corresponds with some semi-devastating outside event that is like a last straw for all the things you've been saving up waiting to process and adjust to, then they all come in a rush resulting in an overwhelmed often overly depressing mess.
You wallow in it briefly pull yourself up and go on. You're going to make it, get over it, time heals, you're strong, you're bigger than this, it doesn't matter, focus on the positive, it's for the best.... You end up interrupted before you've finished grieving, you're intercepted mid-process so the change and the regret & the proper place for the responsibility & pain is never fully digested, you'll keep it with you, but it's really not that bad because...
Because after all change is a good thing.
Keep telling yourself that

2003

Just digging thru the past and found this ::

Time seems to capsulize

Maybe I buried it too far in the sand

Love seems to know what’s right

Knows tears fall at night beating on the sand

Don't worry Dear,
Nothing is as it was, it's lightly bruising
Nothing is clear
Nothing is how we meant it to be...

And I'm not ashamed to say or to admit
he was everything, only because
I wanted him to be
Obligingly I let him remain, never lost
And I remain, Mostly Yours,
Never Mending