Tag: grief

How Beautiful is Your World Today?

7 Steps to Becoming a Person of Hope | Josh Daffern

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ― Albert Camus

What a surprise out of nowhere. I wasn’t looking for it. Seems like all at once a handful of experiences happened that set me back on course this week.

CBS news has these feel good stories by Steve Hartman. I love watching, especially when there’s been so much hopeless crime, weather, disaster and politics streaming out of that screen. I saw one that was perfect, it broke my heart and then filled up my bucket of hope – there was a good old American happy ending. This rare story had a beautiful arc. 

On the Road with Steve Hartman: The Gray Brothers

Click on the link to watch the story of two brothers who were left as orphans in the world – but found a way out of their hopeless circumstances.

Two People Walking Pictures | Download Free Images on Unsplash

A friend I worked with years ago shared his heartbreak about death visiting four dear people in his life. He has been consistently reaching out to a wide audience, sharing his own journey and offering wise perspective. Always through the lens of his own struggle and hurt. He and his wife fought a long battle with cancer before she recently departed for heaven. I so admire him because he keeps encouraging people like me. It would be easy to retreat. Easier to hide out alone. He’s not doing that. He’s still living his life out loud in ways that help other people. He reminds me that I’m not alone during my own days of grief. It’s beautiful.

A song from my own playlist popped up and caught be by surprise. I didn’t even remember it or putting it on the playlist. It came at me right when I needed it. It’s a Beautiful World, a duet by Dierks Bentley and Patty Griffin. I just love her voice and music. Click on the title and listen to the song yourself.

Here’s part of the lyrics that filled me up so much:

In this beautiful worldSay what you will but I still believeIt’s a beautiful worldIt’s a beautiful world
And I know (I know)I’m not dreamin’I just choose (choose) to believe it
So I hate that I sometimes miss what’s right in front of my eyes, ohAnd I know at the end of my road I’ll be wantin’ more timeJust another sunsetOne more kiss from my babyA smile from a friend

Sitting there driving down these perpetually overheated roads, this mysterious song, pops up and reminds me about perspective. Like the rudder on a boat, steering my attitude away from fear and worry.

Rudder Vs Tiller: An Expert Comparison in 2023

Instead of complaining about the heat I’ve been telling strangers I pass by that we’re one more day closer to Christmas. Now, why am I so filled with hope?

Always be ready to offer a defense, humbly and respectfully, when someone asks why you live in hope.  1 Peter 3:15

How Long Do Two Years Take?

Silhouette of man alone and wave on the ... | Stock image | Colourbox

I just read that two years is twenty-four months or
seven hundred and thirty days or
seventeen thousand five-hundred and twenty hours or
one million, fifty-one thousand, two hundred minutes or
sixty-three million, seventy-two thousand seconds.

When there’s a global crises and everyone is acting different, locked up, face masked, afraid, hoarding toilet paper, working from home, staying six feet apart, lonely, watching way too much TV, ordering take-out again and again, lining up in cars for a vaccination, or counting off the days to normal – two years can seem to pass slowly.

Two years ought to be enough time to get on with life, to find the next path to take, but who can get through all the weeds that are now sprouting in the vacant lot that’s life as we know it? Working from home for good, retiring early, supply chain problems, school board wrestling matches, children at home or school, airplane fist fights and new variations of virus floating up from who knows where. Two years may not be long enough, right?

I’m ready for the flight director to announce over the intercom when we will be landing and I can unbuckle this seat belt that’s been constricting my life for what feels like, I don’t know, two years. When will there be time to get off and get on with what ought to be happening? Unpacking, looking at the view from the new balcony, seeing what’s for dinner, imagining the next sunrise. Isn’t it time to turn to the next page?

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.” ― C.S. Lewis

Two years of everything on hold while working together to keep afloat. The past few days seem like the space of two years. I can’t seem to get started on putting out all the fires that burn in any normal week. There just wasn’t time to move on. Grief needs to have its time and space to breathe and find a place. These past two years just didn’t have any time for me to pause for long – and yet I did way too much sitting like bump. Maybe just a little shock settling in every now and then.

“God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.”  ― Walter de la Mare

I recently trudged through a few airports lugging a too heavy suitcase. It wasn’t modern enough. Didn’t roll very well. We’ve all been there, right? Trying to get across three football fields full of people in five minutes lugging two sacks of cement on roller skates. Traveling for the novice is such an adventure. Two years hauling around a grief I’ve not had time or space to check.

Should You Shrink or Plastic Wrap Your Checked Luggage?

 

“The tears I feel today
I’ll wait to shed tomorrow.
Though I’ll not sleep this night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight:
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to talk
Not choked with grief, clear-minded.
My mouth cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
Yes, I’ll keep my tears til later:
But my grief will never go.”
― Anne McCaffrey

Some Words to a Friend

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.” ― Marcel Proust

Death has been near over the past weeks. Friends and family have experienced loss, some expected, others very sudden. A dear friend from my past recently went through the slow decline and then death of her spouse. What in the world could I say or write down to offer as comfort? Friends have lost a parent, sibling, close friends. One friend is flying halfway around the world to bury his father. Some have colleagues at work who have become gravely ill and are fearful. My own loss was in 2019, but the pandemic has made it seem like a never ending misery.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” ― William Shakespeare

Image result for walking together on the beach sunset

What I did was sit and make a list describing my experiences, hoping something might help or encourage. Maybe something would be useful to others I know (and don’t) who are also traveling this kind of road.

“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.” ― John Irving

  1. There’s a hard part every day. Sometimes it’s a simple little routine, like coming out of Starbucks (her favorite haunt). Other times, like today, it’s a letter from my niece telling me about her upcoming wedding. I’m not writing about all the fond remembrances. What I mean here is a punch in the gut, a difficult swerve in the road that can take my breath away. Hard parts are not to be avoided. They are an important piece of the journey. It is what it is.
  2. This isn’t something that one day you will “get over” or “put behind you” – despite all of the best sentiments of your loved ones and even casual acquaintances. I think living with loss is a permanent part of life.
  3. Memory is a living, breathing presence.
  4. For others, even family, a segment of their life has gone, someone who filled an important part. But the rest of their lives goes on, day by day. For you, your ENTIRE life has now been scattered to the four winds and what’s left will need to be reordered, from the ground up. The rest of your circle does not share the same experience.
  5. Some parts of life and living will need to be changed as you walk into your next chapter. But other parts should remain as healthy anchors to what mean so much (see #3)
  6. There are probably other people that will need some of your attention and love – because of their own loss and grief. You are the closest person they have who remains.
  7. Re-establishing a new routine is vital. It’s little things that will matter. The current circumstances are making this nearly impossible.
  8. I had to gently tell people to stop asking me if there was anything I needed. Instead I said, if you feel like there’s something you should do, it’s probably God’s Spirit nudging you to action. Don’t let me get in the way!
  9. Spending so much time alone has turned me into a real chatterbox when I’m with others. At times I stand beside myself and look over and don’t even recognize who I’ve become. It tells me how much I need social interaction – this pandemic is unhealthy for all of us – even without catching COVID.
  10. Eating meals alone has become a problem:
    • I’ve stopped cooking
    • There are too many leftovers when I do
    • I am too often poisoning myself with past its due date food
    • Then there’s always the danger of developing scurvy
    • I’m eating pre-made salads with kale now, yuck!
  11. I’m having to learn how to play two roles at once. Activities I could ignore and take for granted because she was managing all of that (keeping up with details about family members for example) now need my full attention. Things now happen – or don’t because I’m not asking questions or expressing wishes. I’ve got to be more aware as I’m 100% of this now non-existent couple.
  12. Because of the social isolation caused by the pandemic, I’m having a hard time figuring out the cause of the drift I experience in my life. Will it pass once the global virus is gone? Or is this my new norm that I need to become more hands-on about?
  13. I have experienced WONDERFUL connections to family and friends who hang on to me and keep my head above the waters – gifts from God every single day.

“Don’t go through life; grow through life.” ― Eric Butterworth