Healing After My Mom’s Death - Read this if you have lost a loved one. It will help. Really, I’ve been there.
I wrote the post below 7 years ago and just read it again today. Wow! What a difference. I read such sadness in my voice – such hopelessness but such determination to survive. I did survive. In fact, I must say I am in an entirely different place now than I was then. Going through the loss of my mother was one of the most difficult struggles I’ve ever endured. I was 27 years old but I felt just like a little child who had lost everything. And yet, As Rachel Lynde used to say (Anne of Green Gables), “The sun will go on rising and setting whether I (Anne) fail in Geometry or not.” Now, I know this isn’t geometry but you get the point. Life goes on. So, where’s the encouragement in this dreary post? Seven years later my life is so much better than I ever thought it could be. I remember being so depressed after my mother passed, feeling so incredibly guilty thinking I should have taken better care of her. (I took care of her but the enemy has a way of distorting things. He is our accuser and the Father of Lies. Never forget that.) I am better, whole really, entirely, 100% thanks to God. I read the following post and I don’t even recognize the girl who wrote those words. So if you are struggling, if you are hurting, give it time and seek help from those in the Kingdom of God. God is our Healer. He is our Redeemer. He is the restorer of lost souls and the physician who heals the broken-hearted. And will heal yours. He will take the weight from your shoulders. He took mine.
My Post from 2010
I love to look at black and white photographs. They remind me of how effervescent life is, like bubbles in champagne, new today and gone tomorrow. I look at those before me, forever young and beautiful, and yet, this still-life photograph never captures their essence. It never tells of the long talks past my bedtime when I just couldn’t bring myself to confess whatever horror I thought I’d committed(like kissing a frog on a dare, which by the way, did not turn into a prince). It never tells of the Saturday mornings going to garage sales or the Friday nights watching movies until 4 am. It never shows the true beauty, that beauty that time cannot erase. I’ve heard that pain only makes you stronger. But sometimes I want to say, okay, enough’s enough, I’m strong enough. Let’s move on now. I wonder if I hurt so over the loss of my mother, that I might understand how my children must hurt over the loss of their own biological parents. I wonder how to guide them through their own grief when my own journey seems so slow and so long. I know that the key, the saving grace, is to learn to truly trust God. I must trust that I did all I could, it was her time, she is happy and at peace. I must trust, and yet, as deeply as I believe, that kind of trust doesn’t come easily. And so I pay daily the price, I pick up my sorrows, and carry them with me as though I must carry the world on my shoulders only to glance behind and catch a glimpse that is not me holding up the world but His gentle hands. I could let go at any time, and yet I choose to push with all my efforts, will myself to exhaustion, and carry the weight I refuse to lay down.
I gave Him my weight. Give Him yours as well.
