Grieving and Living

              

           Everywhere.....

Home.

Church. 

Target. 

At the mailbox.

T.J. Maxx.

Whole Foods.

Rei. 

Driving down the road.

The grocery store.  

Hobby Lobby.  

Cold Stone Creamery.  

A friend's house. 

Everywhere I go I think of her. 

I miss her so much.  

I miss our life before she left for Home.

I miss our family as it used to be.

Thinking of her brings joy.

Thinking of her brings sorrow.

Such opposite emotions mingled together ~ 

inseparable in the thought.  

This is the cup He's chosen me to drink 

~ I will drink it and give thanks.

Thankful for what He's doing through this suffering.

We rejoice in our sufferings, 

knowing that suffering produces endurance, 

and endurance produces character, 

and character produces hope. 

Romans 5:3-4

I want to endure.

I want to have character.

I want to have genuine hope.

Therefore, 

I must suffer.

There is purpose in this process.

I could choose to shut my mind off and not think of her, 
but what a gift her life was (and still is). 
Not thinking of her would be not thanking Him for such a precious gift.

I recently closed my facebook account.  It was too much of a distraction for me.  

I want to quiet myself in Him, 

in His Word.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. (Job 1:21a)
He gave us Lydia.
He took her Home.  

The reality is 

~if all the gifts He's blessed us with were stripped away~ 

He would still be enough.  

Blessed be the name of the Lord.  (Job 1:21b)

                    We are grieving, 
               
                                but we are living life! 

 

It appears life is as normal.  

We go out in public and on the surface we look "normal".

Everyday is hard.  Sometimes it's hard to even breathe.

My tears are always right below the surface, ready to spill out at any moment.

The reality is even though on the outside everything looks OK, 

on the inside we are brokenhearted and hurting.

Reminds me to be tender with others...

because you never know what they're going through.