Going Through

Not so interesting is this crabbiness, this constant anger boiling inside me. It's not so easy to be my friend right now, another stage when I don't even like myself.

Mostly, people just don't understand it and a big part of why they don't get it is because they have forgotten. (The other reason being they just 'don't know...') It is good to be validated by Grief Group, Grief Share videos, books, others who are grieving. The "normal" that doesn't seem so normal to anyone else, can really make you crazy. I am not suprised that people contemplate and sometimes committ suicide. It seems the easier way and I think it probably is.

Psalm 77:2c "My soul refused to be comforted"
Jeremiah 15:18a "Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable?"
Job 6:2a "Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed"
Jonah 4:1 "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry"

"Grief is not rational. All the logic in the world will not allow you to escape the ache inside. It is an emotional jumble. The feelings are real: the mental and physical pain; the sense that it's all a dream and you'll wake soon; the denial; the caldron of boiling anger, the confusion; the embarrassment of one's emotions; disappointment, and frustration." {Gone But Not Lost, Grieving the Death of a Child, David W. Weirsbe, 1992}

I cannot explain where I am at right now with grief, other than to say I am in an unexplainable funk. Yes, angry, but disoriented and foggy too. I feel physical pain in my body, an ache that won't abate, I have headaches everyday without exception and to be honest, I just want to feel really good, for once. I carry the additonal burden of not being the kind of friend I want to be, mother I should be, wife I know I can be, instrument of help to others that I desire to be. I wonder how long it will be until people just give up on me entirely. There are very VERY few people in my life that have lasted this long as it is. People that ask, "How are you doing?" and ask it with the death of my daughter and the burden of sharing my grief in mind. VERY few. There is a small handful of friends that have stayed the course and I thank God for them on a regular basis and ask Him to give them endurance for me, because I need them and theirs is not an easy path to walk either. I do realize that. Their example will be my model in the future of how to walk alongside a grieving mother.

I told my sister last night on the phone something like this: Don't think there is no spiritual growth in anger, there is. It is not just in the depth of purest sorrow that we are changed, that we grow; it is in ALL the stages of grief. There is something to learn in each corner of emotion, in each day of pain.

Isaiah 43:2 "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow on you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; neither will the flame kindle on you."

going through....Lesley