We had our first snowfall this weekend and it looks like it will be hanging around. My daughter and a friend made a snow fort on the front lawn. Now we need more snow to create a higher wall and snowballs to throw at people!
It has been a couple of weeks since my older daughter left, and although there is relief because the conflict in the house is so much less, there is also sadness and a sense of emptiness.
I'm back to grieving again. The trauma is returning as I think once again of the death of my husband. I've had a break from that for a few weeks, and have enjoyed it, to be honest! However, once again I'm reflecting on how he could reach a point where he could not want to fight to live. How could he be willing to snuff his own life out. There is no way I will ever really understand.
Slowly, we are building a new life. It is a painful work, because every step takes me farther from the life I had, the life I thought I would have.
Someone said today: a year ago you would never have thought you'd be where you are now. In so many ways, that is a huge blessing, but it also feels like I've moved into another reality (one I don't particularly like).
I had not realized fully how much stress I was under until my older daughter left. I have not had the butterflies in the stomach, the feeling of impending doom and the doubt, fear and anxiety that followed me everywhere for two years.
At the same time, the grief has returned and the trauma with it. I am feeling the weight of it all again. We were talking about Christmas and my mother's house and then I started thinking about my husband's death in that house and feeling again the shock and horror of it all.
I know he did not plan his death in advance, although he had considered suicide as an option. I don't know for how long, but I suspect it was since he was a teenager. Perhaps he was able to suppress it at times, but I know that there was a spirit of death that followed him and would not leave him alone. Also, there was unforgiveness and unresolved grief in his heart. He was not able to process those emotions and get them out. They festered inside of him and contributed to his death.
I will never understand, but I cannot move on until I have turned this over and over and over and processed it all out of me. I cannot reconcile myself to this loss until every single moment of it has been replayed and reviewed in my mind and fully incorporated into my understanding. Finally, I must accept it all - that I will never know why he did it; that I will never understand how he could do it; that I will never have been able to stop it even if the girls had not been in our lives; that so many factors contributed to his death and I am NOT RESPONSIBLE.
That is still a long way away, but it is closer than it was a few months ago.
God spoke to me this week: Revelation 21 talks about the city of Jerusalem and the precious jewels that adorn its gates and surround the foundations of the temple. That is how he sees me and my daughter. Jewels are not sappy sentimental things. They are hard, and multi-faceted. They radiate and reflect light, and have great depth and clarity. Jewels are precious because they are costly and hard to find. They are also used to adorn because they are so beautiful.
My daughter fills her pockets with rocks she finds that seem pretty to her. Jewels are even more precious and rare than pretty rocks. We are rebuilding our lives, but it must be around the reality of my Saviour who is more than just a Friend, a Father who is eternal and loves more than I can even imagine and a Spirit who infills and breathes life into me every single moment.
Comments
Post a Comment