Four Weeks of Grief

Four weeks today...it's like our spirits just KNOW and we don't even have to look at a calendar. Sometimes I wonder when Thursdays will be normal again...then I realize that we are going to have to find a new "normal" because Chris was part of our normal. I'm lucky in a lot of ways, my kids talk and they talk a LOT. And they articulate grief in really remarkably direct and mature ways. "I was sitting in class and for a minute I had to remind myself oh yeh it's real, Dad really died." "When are we ever going to stop being SO tired?" "Who are we now because one of us is gone and we were part of each other and now one part is gone?"

Grief is HARD, it's like a lurking sea dragon in some ways...it sneaks up and drags us under the water and we gasp for air. Then we go for a few days and the waters are calm and we flip on the radio and we find ourselves laughing even...but the sea dragon is under those seemingly calm seas and we each know it.

I think I quite likely have the most remarkable young adults on the planet to share this journey with me. As close as chemo and surgery drew the FOUR of us, the THREE of us seem to be drawing ever closer in the pain of our shared loss and they amaze me in their ability both to feel their own stuff, share it with me and then turn around and be there for me as well. And while it hurts, and believe me, it HURTS badly, we do it together. That helps...and I KNOW it would make Chris really proud of us.

Sunday will be Chris' first Easter in heaven and our first Easter without him. It will also be a month to the day since he died. There is a lot of comfort in it actually. Proclaiming that Easter promise has never been more real to me than this year. I've always trusted in it, now I have SEEN it. And our Lord is shoring us up each day for the pains and hurts of the grief we feel and giving us blessings amidst it all. Each day the daily bread really comes. God meets us in the hurt, God meets us in the tears, God meets us in the tremendous amount of homework backlog and the paperwork of the legal side of it all. We fall, God picks us up, we cry, God blesses us. Whatever we face, God has already been there and knows the way and guides us lovingly and gently through.

And I would be terribly remiss if I didn't state for the whole world to see that part of my daily bread each day has a name, two actually, Emily Jane and Eric Christian. I thank God for them over and over, my babies are emerging in to wonderful vibrant people of faith and I cherish them as my companions with God in our journey of grief.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh