Blessed Are Those Who Mourn…

I am having a hard day. I know that grief is not linear, and I know that it manifests in strange ways. All my emotions are stuck in my throat today, and I’m teetering between something that feels like deep depression or an anxiety attack. A truly awesome feeling for my brain to overanalyze! I’m trying to just sit with the feelings, but they are really threatening to overwhelm right now. So I decided to write.

I woke up this morning thinking about Jesus. Not a bit unusual. I love thinking about Jesus and his earthly encounters. I love imagining the Three Wise Men bringing a puppy to Bethlehem, and what kind of puppy that would be. I love thinking about the people he must have randomly encountered that didn’t make the Gospels and imagine how he interacted with them. I believe so strongly that my walk is to emulate the love and kindness that he radiated, and I strive to be that light in people’s path. In my daily encounters with people from all walks of life, I try to imagine which of these people or situations Jesus would have abandoned, and then I try to be the face of Jesus’ love for those people. <for the record, there are some folks at a rental car place in Hawaii that would have frustrated Jesus, I’m pretty sure, but he wouldn’t abandon them>  It’s all about the love. I know that with every fiber of my being.

In keeping with sharing the love, I wake up every day and pin my heart to my sleeve. Right now that heart is broken…I am not sure how to manage all the feelings. I am trying to recognize and live from this newfound home…the “Land of Sad” as I have started calling it. Everything that we knew as normal changed. We were cruising along at an altitude where we knew the best speed, currents, and view, and suddenly our altitude dropped and brought a whole new set of considerations. I don’t know how to navigate the most basic emotions at this new altitude right now. I’m impatient. I’m unfocused. I’m impulsive. I’m on edge. I’m weepy. I’m numb. I feel all the instability swirling around in my brain, and at times swear it is going to take me down. I don’t know how I’m supposed to return to the Bethy who loved so big and freely when it all hurts. That broken heart on my sleeve can’t withstand the bruises the world delivers so regularly. I don’t know how to keep loving big when I know the end result is an awful hole in my world. 

I am reading everything I can find right now about grief and mourning, but I ended up returning to an old favorite, Anne Lamott, who wrote, “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” 

I’m still very much in the broken leg stage. I am not even sure if healing has really started. My emotions are still so raw, and I feel sometimes like I haven’t even actually accepted that Mom is gone. Seeing pictures, listening to recordings, being among her things…it all feels very surreal that she isn’t coming back for birthday dinners and play time with Jonah. I don’t know how to move away from this stage, and I feel like I’m absolutely useless at helping my Dad or anyone else who crosses my path. How am I supposed to be light and a face for love when I am falling apart inside? 

I am reflecting tonight on what “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” must mean. To me, the comfort doesn’t come in moving through the grief, it comes in knowing that through all the pain, heartbreak, and suffering that come in this world, we stand in unending love. In Mom’s final days from diagnosis to death, love was the only thing that kept us going. It was in us all, and we could feel that love surrounding us. God’s perfect love. Right now I am having a hard time feeling it, but I’m praying that I will feel grace, peace, and love in my tomorrows just as strongly as I felt them in my life before and the days leading to Mom’s passing. 

At the end of this Very Hard day, I’m searching…I’m hoping to feel the love, and I’m listening for the music in the hopes of dancing imperfectly again in this life. ❤