It's OK to not be OK

"...they saw that his grief was very great."

                                                                      Job 2:13

     When you bury someone that you love with all of your heart, grief dominates you.  It is such a strong emotion that it darkens every aspect of your life and your emotions.  When you have responsibilities and others that depend on you, a part of you tries to respond to their needs and get up and function.  But the other part of you screams "I don't care!" and you just pull the covers over your head and lay there and cry.  You then feel like the worse person, the weakest Christian, that ever was.

     During one of my worse screaming and crying times, my husband came into the bedroom, laid down beside me and held me.  After a while I stopped sobbing and he gently said, "You're not OK right now.  But that's OK."

     That simple statement helped me realize that what I was experiencing was natural, normal, and actually to be expected.  Being told that it was OK to not be OK right then reminded me that I was human, and I was hurting – but most important, that it was OK to not be OK because of what I was going through.

     We are only human, mere flesh and bone.  Grief over loss isn't a lack of faith in God, it is the human response to the other side of the strongest emotion we have: love.  When we love someone, their absence evokes grief.  The stronger the love relationship, the deeper the grief.

     The Bible says in Isaiah 53:3 that Jesus is a man of sorrows and is acquainted with our grief.  And the shortest verse in the Bible (John 11:35) simply says, "Jesus wept" and that weeping was at a funeral.

     The Lord knows the depths of our hurt because He has been there.  And He isn't afraid to go there with us!  Sometimes He speaks through someone close as my husband did to me saying that it's OK and sometimes He speaks into our spirit, "Peace, be still".  Jesus loves us and wants us to know that we are not alone.  He wants us to know that He knows!  

     And that it's OK to not be OK while we heal.

     Shared in love,

                              Cris

Grief and Reality

      Before my Mom died, I had experienced grief: the death of my grandparents and great-grand-parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, my older brother, and my Dad who I totally adored.

       And though I grieved for each of them, it wasn't at all the intensity that I have felt since Mom's homegoing to Heaven.  This grief has been so totally overwhelming that the pain has been actually physical and there were times when I could not even breath.  

     In trying to understand grief, I have come to realize that with Mom still living I had a link through her to the other people that I love that have gone on.  She knew all of them and talking with her kept me attached to them, especially Daddy.  So my grief for Daddy was always softened by having Momma who loved him and talked with me about him.  Somehow that kept the pain of loss from being so acute.   

     But when Momma died, I lost all of that and for the first time in my life, I felt totally alone - even though my good husband was always at my side, I still felt, ... well, ... abandoned.  

     And the entire family dynamic changed and in a way it came apart.  Momma was not only my link to those other family members who had gone on before us but she was also the anchor to our family.  She was the one that all of us came back to, that we wanted to be with.  With her no longer here, my brothers have both gone on back to their lives and are OK with going forward without her.  But I don't seem to be able to do that.  

     Not only was I closer to Momma being the only daughter, but she stayed in our home 24/7 for the last 7 and ½ years of her life.  She allowed me to care for her and she spent her last days with me.  It was the best part of my life.  So when she was no longer here, I was the one that was left with a gaping hole in my heart, my home, and my routine.  And as good as my husband was to her and still is to me, it's not the same without her.

      And the grief overwhelmed me like a Tsumani: it hit me hard and sucked the very life out of my being.  Those first few weeks I only functioned on adrenaline, and all I could do was function.  The family basically left the final funeral decision making to me since I had been the one taking care of everything for Momma.  I had to make decisions while I wasn't even able to think straight.  And I realize later that all of the decisions I made weren't the right ones – I dropped the ball on some things and I made mistakes.  Oh, my family was kind and understanding, but it still hurts me to look back and see how badly I handled those decisions.  That has been a burden almost too hard to carry some days, too.

     I know now that there was nothing that prepared me for any of this even though I had excellent examples lived out before me.  Reality is always so much more harsh than what is imagined the experience would be like.  Reality can be cruel.

     And grief gives you a different view of life and relationships, of what is important and what is just superficial.  

     Grief makes you grow up.

     Shared in love, 
                    Cris