Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

This is the fourth Christmas without David.  This is my third Christmas spending it alone and while that sounds so depressing to say, I am actually filled with JOY!

I haven't been alone all Christmas this year, just today.  I've been able to connect with friends, people I care about, some with phone calls or texts, most of Skype or Facebook.  (I have to say, as much as people moan about the digital age, I'm grateful for it... so many loved ones all over the world!)

I've been able to watch people get together with loved ones, and their children, happy faces, most of them are relaxed.  I'm so blessed to have this window into the joy of others. 

It brings me joy this year to see that life goes on.  In years past, that hasn't been the case.  I was jealous.  But today I am glad to see that in the middle of friends and family going through hard things that they take time to celebrate together.

I've watched dear people go through serious losses and hardships this year, and yet in this season of celebrating they are choosing to do so.  I have much to learn.  My loss drove me inwards, it's not such a surprise because I'm an inwards type of woman... but I realize that my hurting heart has healed.  Enough so that hiding away isn't what I need.  I'm realizing a new trend.

I want to help the hurting.

I know the depth of loss.  My heart has been broken like a clay pot, but I'm finding that like Japanese Kintsukuroi - the pieces have been repaired with gold... like this:



My pain my experience helps me understand a little.  Our experiences are our ministry.  Through my loss I can care about someone else's loss, or hurt, hope dashed, broken-ness, and JOY.

I don't know what all the next year entails, I know I'm not meant to know - but to experience it in it's fullness.  I'm looking forward to what will come, but even more I'm excited to be in the moment and just live it. 

My prayer for all of us is that we allow our broken pieces will be put together by our skilled craftsman.  Our God.  Jesus, as it has been said so many times, is the reason for the season.  But the whole of that is that we celebrate the advent of God made flesh to live among us... Jesus came to live, and then to die on our behalf so that we could have direct relationship with God.  So we can all be God's kintsukuroi.

Merry Christmas.

And the world flows on.

The world flows on and I am stuck in an eddy.  I'm close enough to the edge of it to feel the flow, to be turned by the flow, and then I am caught up in the swirling backwater again.  Ah, grief.

THREE YEARS and I'm still stuck.  I can't seem to get over the thoughts of what should be, why isn't he here?  why am I alone?

It's my birthday again tomorrow.  He will be forever forty and I am 45 tomorrow.  I have white hair and wrinkles he doesn't know about.  Can he see me?  Wherever he is, does he miss me?  Will I see him again?  My half was ripped away, his own violent action and I'm so angry and feel so guilty for being angry.

I want to move on, but the men I am interested in aren't available, so I take that I'm not really, really ready to move on or I would pick men who could have me in their lives.... well, I only want one, not a whole harem of men (wouldn't that be interesting?)

I wonder if I'll ever be whole.

And I'm so tired of holding my head up.  I'm tired of taking on the world.  I'm tired of getting up every morning and not being able to wake him, or rest against him at the end of a long day.  I'm tired of holding the world up.  Yes, I know.  God.  I know.  I do.

This isn't every day.  This is just a bubble.  I can ride the bubble.  I've ridden this bubble.  Yet, today I feel like I'm drowning.  And the world moves on, flowing on and on and I am stuck in this eddy.

It's the 4th of July this weekend.  I won't do anything.  I'll stand at my bedroom window and watch the fireworks till I am tired, or I'll dork around online until my eyes hurt enough to make me shut them to sleep.  Even if I go someplace, I'll be the add-on.  Thought of as an obligation to include.  I don't fit.

He made me match.  We were the oddballs and we matched and because we matched we fit places.  Or, I thought we did.  Maybe he still felt the oddball.  I'm tired.  I'm tired of swimming alone.

I'm afraid if I say I am tired like this, someone will decide I need intervention, and I don't really.  I'm not going anywhere and my debts make it unlikely that I'll stop living because I can't give up.

It's a pity party day.  Trust me, not only does no one else want to hear this, I don't want to hear myself.  THREE YEARS.  I am dog paddling in the eddy and the world flows on, floats on.

I promised a friend that after a year it gets easier, that her grief will get easier, and it does - it will..  These happen with much less frequency.  Family visits are a trigger for me.  And I had two last month.  Too many.  I love them but I don't want to remember.  I can't feel this sad all the time any more.

I've got next to nothing to give today... and I have to bake because it's the fourth of July this weekend and it'll be profitable.  People think you are brave when you are just responding to survival instinct.  I do not feel brave.  What man in his right mind would want to take this mess on?   I am not always here, but today I am stuck in this eddy.

I had better get myself into the kitchen.  I do not want to go.  But I will keep treading water because that's what I do.  I survive and sometimes I thrive, but I am still stuck in this eddy.  Oh, how I want to flow on.

Letting it go

I've been holding onto the promise of a specific thing.  I've been holding onto this hope for so long.  My fingers have been clenched around it so tight for so long that I am not sure how to let go of it.

But I think I have to let it go.

Not let it go in the hopes that if I do that God will make that thing come around to the way that I want them to be but to really, really let go.  And I don't know if I can do it.

What happens if I don't have the hope of this thing?  Am I going to free fall into nothingness?  Is there a point of life beyond this hope?  I am not sure.  I don't know.

What I do know is that I am loved.  I am loved so much more than this place of holding onto my own desire will allow me to acknowledge.  I've been holding onto this hope so hard that I'm not letting myself trust in the fact that I am loved so much and that there is a plan for what's next.... that I am loved.

So, I need to let go.  I need to close the door.  I need to say goodbye.  God is more than capable of reopening a door if I've closed it wrongly.

Happy New Year (and welcome January, the month of discipline and accountability)

Happy New Year!!

Hooray and be gone 2014, you year of lots of things that I didn't like and lots of things that I did.

Welcome 2015 and all of your adventures, big and small, hard and easy.  What will you bring?  Only God knows.  Literally, only God knows.

But here is January and the call on my heart is Discipline and Accountability.

For the last few months, perhaps the last 6 months I've felt like God was asking for everything.  I mean, he asks that of us always as Christians, to lay down our burdens and to take up his cross and follow - but somehow the call feels deeper again.  Back to Eustace and the removing of the dragon skin.  Another deep wrenching from me the things I put on to hold onto the things I want to hold onto and not be totally his.

So enters January, the month of discipline and accountability.  I should have been doing this before now.  I should have started in September.  It's been brewing since September, but I'm not always ready to be as obedient as I should.  I have control issues.  Oh, boy, do I have control issues.

I'm seeing where my lack of discipline is making me be so distracted by things that shouldn't be an issue at this stage of my life.

I sat down with a note book and made a list.  I made a list of the stupid excess in my life, where I am missing it, what needs to be done so I can be focused on other things.  I tried to be realistic, I know me.  I am undisciplined.

Today was day 1.  Day one.  Ug.  30 days to make a habit.  I need them.  I need good habits and accountability.  Sorry that you who read here get to be subjected to this.