7 Years. Depending on how you look at it, it's a long time. Or not. Grief will follow you all the way down the road. It doesn't drop off on a different path along the way, it leads. It stands front and center even when you can't see it, even when you don't want it. It shapes your soul.It lines your face. It etches a picture on your mind that cannot be erased. 

In the small moments, it is a touch, a smile, a pat, a compassionate word towards another. An empathetic, sorrowful and heavy, kiss of grief.  It does more than most would imagine. It changes the psyche. The eyes and what they see, the ears and what they hear, the touch and what it feels. 

No one believes it, but you walk through the world completely different. It leaves you changed. And nobody really wanted that. Nobody asked for it, no one wants to turn into it. Grief doesn't give choices. It envelopes. It closes you in, it liberates you. 

We have becomes something we did not want. We have developed a part of ourselves that we did not see, did not hear, did not desire. 


When God called their name, He called ours too.  He wanted to see our faces again. He wanted to hear our voices, touch the souls that He created..Maybe God will not reveal all of the purposes, but He does reveal so much. Are we willing to wait over the earth, the dirt, the trials, the days? Are we willing to wait while we serve the others?

I will wait. Baited, but waiting.