Grief Changes Us

 I know the words in me have dried up. But they're in there, and somehow, in someway, maybe they'll seep out of me, albeit slowly.

I go through my days and many times it feels like I'm floating, with my feet not quite on the ground. It isn't only grief, coming into the reality that my Mom left this earth over 6 months ago. It is all the many changes and challenges that a life holds - a life that is mine somehow, the life I live as mother, wife, friend, and neighbor. 

The traumas of my life have seemed to break me. And it is reasonable to think that. But I don't say that to engender pity or even awe. I simply state it as fact. I'm not quite all here, and I trust God allowed even my own responses to trauma to protect me...somehow. 

And yet, adaptive strategies like floating through life without really feeling everything that can be felt, or even the natural normal things that would bring others - unbroken others - joy or sorrow, these are not helpful in the long run. They are a good bandaid, but a poor healing balm.

I can't yet reckon with the reality of loss. My Mom and I did not have a great relationship. There were lots of stings and barbs and hard things, and I won't go into it here, but I say it because it makes my grieving process long, winding, turbulent, complicated.

Her absence means there is a work I must do - an inner work, a hard work. It is a sifting, a reflecting, and a prayerful work. One that I cannot do in a few hours, but takes time and solitude. My soul longs for quiet rest - to get away somehow. But I am a mother; I am a wife. I carry a life whether I want to or not. In time, I trust God will lead me to quiet pastures where He will work in the silence, in the healing balm of His Word, and minister grace to my limping soul. Surely, He binds up the brokenhearted.

There are times when I wake up to my life and wonder how I got here. How I happen to have 5 growing-up children. How we have survived - how they've survived me, and I them. It hasn't been easy. 

Truth be told, I had kids as a way to cope with trauma. There, I said it. People have children for all sorts of good and bad reasons. More often than not, they're self-serving reasons. By the 5th kid I realized it wasn't working. I wasn't actually beginning to feel more, to connect, to engage fully in life. I only was becoming more exhausted. And I was a crazy volatile mom at times. It was not fun for me or my kids. 

It began to dawn on me that my kids didn't ask for a broken mom. And that the basic responsible thing to do would be to raise them as if I wasn't as broken as I was. I shifted my parenting over the years as I grew to understand attachment and healthy childhood psychological development. Remember Erik Eriksen? The guy who labeled stages of human development? How 0-1 is the phase of 'trust vs. distrust'? Yeah, that spoke to me. Our parenting had to change, as each child arrived on the scene with different needs and our basic model of parenting wasn't going to work. We had to grow up as parents and realize the task we're given isn't for us to prove ourselves via our kids' behaviour. It wasn't to garner respect from others for how sweet and well-behaved they were. It was to bring forth in them the beauty of Jesus in their lives; to honour the person He made them to be. To welcome them, even when we're overwhelmed.

I grieve many losses. Not just those I've lost through death, and there are so many in the past few years, that is a work in itself. I grieve the loss of years. Of years I've been checked out, unable to welcome the joys of each day. And I cling to the promise, 'I will restore the years the locusts have eaten.' 

Depression, trauma, grief, loss - these have sucked decades from my life. I look back over 20 years and much of it is vague, like looking through an opaque dream. I didn't know how to anchor myself in the moment. Often marriage was difficult and I found refuge in the heaven narrative that all will be well when I get to heaven. But God didn't let me linger long in that notion (though it's true, I'm sure it will be well in heaven!), because I kept reading the Bible (a stubborn habit, I admit) and the Psalmist wrote: I know I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And God started me on a journey to discover what might His goodness look like here, in this land, the land in which I live?

And I've walked a road and continue to limp along. And once in a while I pop my head up into blog-space and spew my meandering thoughts. I share them as a way to invite dialogue, or at least to be honest. I think we need more honesty in the world - less sugar-coating, more: 'this is the way it really is.'

Wouldn't it be great if I sat here and wrote all the amazing things, the insightful things, the uplifting things that I discover in my journey with Jesus? Yes, and I do this on occasion. But I hope it is delightful on some level to realize that when I tell those things it is only because I am traversing the course of life with many, many handicaps. Maybe it is uplifting for you to know that I carry dead-weight in my soul that is not easily shaken. That I suffer from years of confusion, difficulty, self-abasement and despair. 

If there's anything to inspire, I suppose it's that God has kept me and keeps me. He continues to carry me through, and I continue to trust His word. 

God does indeed seem to move in a mysterious way. He moves in ways I cannot always understand. Sometimes I want to rail at Him and say, 'Fix me! Let me feel!' And sometimes He answers that and I feel for about a minute, some of the grief, some of the loss, some of the ache in my soul that rises to the surface. And then I say, 'Oh Lord, this is enough. You'll need to strengthen my capacity to feel before I can take on anymore.'

As I open up to God, and to my own process of grief, I notice I am not the same me as I was. Part of grief is grieving the person I was before is no more. It adds layers to it. As if the losses and sorrows aren't enough, we lose ourselves in the process. But actually, the unfolding of what my heart can hold reveals there might be a refining of the hidden self that was buried in there. There might be more to me than I knew. There might just be something God will make beautiful in His time. 

So I wait, and work, and watch for His movements in me. And I allow...when I can, those things to surface which need to see the light of day. For everything hidden in the dark corners of my soul needs to feel the fresh breeze of God's grace. He has called me out of darkness and into His marvelous light. But sometimes that light is blinding and my eyes which were used to the dimness can't handle it. And so be it. God keeps shining light into me so as to awaken the dullness where I have ached too long and lost hope. 

I will trust the grief that is changing me is what God ordains. That He is never far from my yearning. That His Word is still fresh, and speaks hope and life if I will take it up and drink deep from His well of Living water. 

Maybe you'll join me in this in your own way.