October 27, 2018

I Will feel

I remember the early days, months and the first few years after losing my son. I didn't know what to do with all the pain and confusion, the new emotions that were a constant in my heart. Having never experienced anything so horrible, how could I figure out what to do and then try to deal according to how the emotions came, when they came and where they came?

How they came was like a held back flood, then the dam breaks. I remember one day stomping my feet and screaming, “No, No, No!” I hated the separation and wanted to change all that had happened. Go back in time. But I couldn’t.

When they came was random. Like standing in the grocery store and picking up chocolate marshmallow ice cream (your favorite) then remembering you are not here anymore to enjoy it. Not a good sight.

Where they came was a guess. I could never anticipate a trigger of those horrible emotions. I remember seeing someone with your likeness, so much it was uncanny, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I’m sure he thought I was weird but I kept staring. Then I lost it. I just wanted you.

Although for the first few years I wanted these awful feelings to go away, at some point something changed. I wanted to feel them. Strange, I know. After asking God for years to take them away, now I’m asking to let me keep feeling them, let them stay.

As I was reading in Lamentations 3 this morning from a version I’d never read it from before, I thought how much like grief these down and up words are.  

          “Grievous thoughts of affliction and wandering plagued my mind – great bitterness
            and gall. Grieving, my soul thinks back; these thoughts cripple, and I sink down. 
            Gaining hope, I remember and wait for this thought: How enduring is God’s loyal love;
            the Eternal has inexhaustible compassion. Here they are, every morning, new! Your faithfulness
            God, is as broad as the day. Have courage, for the Eternal is all that I will need. My soul boasts,
            ‘Hope in God; just wait.’”

When I sink down into the lowest, deepest depths, then I can have hope and remember God’s great love and mercies.
He has all I (we) need. 

So, I will feel and keep feeling because it is then that I see all the ways the Lord has helped me through and is leading me to keep looking up, having courage and depending on Him, and go out to help someone else  who is trying to reconcile all the different emotions running through their hearts and souls.