The most loaded question anyone can ask us right now. I apologize if you've asked me this recently & I've blown you off. Honestly I have a hard time w/ knowing just how much to share. B/c the answer is so complicated. Part of me just wants to say "I'm horrible, what do you expect?". However that's not the complete story. Some moments we're okay. We're even happy sometimes. It's just not our previous level of happiness. I really like Molly Piper's blogpost We used to be happy people ... I even have proof. First time I read this I found it so horrible & depressing. We had just lost Colette & I wanted to be told that the horrible ache would pass. Instead I read that it'll never go away. A couple months later I reread it & it comforts me now. B/c I'm starting to realize that this ache will never truly heal. But this line is a promise that I hope to be able to live one day: “We might not be the happy-go-lucky gals we used to be, but our lives here will tell stories of indescribable loss and the love of a God who made us to be exactly who we are—every line, every gray hair. None of it is wasted.”
So to answer your question, we’re surviving. We’re healing be it slowly. I’ve been repainting the nursery over the weekend & today this line from “A grief observed” by CS Lewis really spoke to me. “Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened up again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?” The grief comes & goes. I’ll go a whole week thinking that we’re healing & doing better & then some trigger will just knock me down. Repainting the nursery has been good. There was just too much planning that happened in that nursery. Plans that were never able to reach fruition. So I needed a change. It’s good but it’s hard. Pretty much anything real & good right now has a flip side of being horrible. The only uncomplicated happy things are the completely superficial, like silly tv shows or shopping trips. Anything w/ real emotion is a mixed bag. Church is good but it’s hard. I’m struggling w/ God so I haven’t made it through a church service yet w/o crying. Part of me dreads quiet time. I have to steel myself up to go wrestle w/ God. It’s all good just hard.
So if I seems flippant sometimes & bottled up it’s because I need to be that way often just to make it through the day. When I’m real it’s just so broken. Even when I talk about Colette & about how we are I’m often still so reserved. It’s almost an out of the body experience, or a very factual discussion.
I’m really enjoying reading “A grief observed” by CS Lewis. It’s a totally different kind of loss but it’s interesting how much we still have in common. Here are a couple of things that really spoke to me. Just to share where we are & what we’re struggling with:
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"Talk to me about the truth of religion & I'm listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion & I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolation of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."
"And poor C. quotes to me, 'Do not mourn like those that have no hope.' It astonishes me, the way we are invited to apply to ourselves words so obviously addressed to our betters. What St. Paul says can only comfort those who love God better than the dead, and the dead better than themselves. If a mother is mourning not for what we has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natual happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy His forever.' A comfort to the God-aimed eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell his a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild."
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I really liked this last quote. Too many people tell us “well take comfort b/c she’s w/ her heavenly father”. Intellectualy I get it & I appreciate the attempt at comfort. However emotionally that is just so out of my realm of comprehension. Someone wrote us about how Colette’s father God is holding her right now for us. I believe that’s true & I know it was written as a comfort but we’re just not there yet. We went to bed sobbing that night. Ian told me that intellectually he gets that Colette is happy & perfect right now & she’s w/ God. But we just can’t get it out of our minds that she still needs us. He’s like I just keep thinking that she still needs her daddy. We just can't shake the loss of parental happiness that quickly. I mean why does God get to hold her & not us? So we’re working on it. This has definitely shown us holes in our faith. Not holes in the theology or anything that intellectually doesn’t make sense, but holes in how much we took certain things to heart.
(Another quote from "A Grief Observed")
“We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house had collapse at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came.”
Don’t worry I’m not having a crisis of faith. I’m just working things out w/ God & realizing that I didn’t have it quite so pulled together as I thought I did. Thanks for listening
