You look fine

I have just discovered another stage of grief I never knew existed: the "I look fine" stage. I look just fine from the outside. There really isn't much to tell that I'm any different from what I was before my husband died, my daughter left. I'm functioning almost 100%. My memory is returning (but that comes and goes). My mind is sharper again. I have more energy (but still nothing like I had before).

But I'm not who I was. I'm still grieving. My heart still feels broken.

And I look just fine.

I have to say, this phase scared me before it came. I heard about it, but I didn't know a name for it. I knew and understood that, at some point, I would have to travel this path alone. I would need to figure it out and life would carry on for everyone else. But for me, it's completely new and different and it feels utterly foreign.

Now, over a year later, I have figured some stuff out. I know who I can ask for help (and that number has dwindled significantly). I know where I am safe. I am beginning to anticipate when I need to pull back so I don't get completely tapped out and drained. I know places I need to avoid.

But, deep inside, I feel hollow.

Okay, so now here is where the Answers start to well up. Jesus is my All in All. He is my sufficiency. He fills me completely. He loves me entirely. He is Bridegroom.

But that hollowness isn't from loss of the Lord. That is still part of my being, and ever will be. That is still my goal, my drive and my energy. But my husband is gone. My dreams are dead. My relationship is over and my future with him is over. My dreams of a family are gone. I need to re-form them with the new family we are - my daughter and me.

And I look just fine.

And the reality is still there.

I've been reading a book by Barbara Yoder called The Overcomer's Anointing. She talks about the darkness as the opportunity for growth and newness in life. We find God in the darkness and then He births something completely new. But the darkness lasts through the whole night. We have to endure the midnight hour when everything appears dead. And we have to let it be dead for some time before we see the light and new growth.

We all know that things look so different in the dark. When the light comes on, the shadows flee and everything comes into sharper focus. But the dark is not a problem to God. He uses it and shapes us with it. It challenges us to allow Him to be more to us than ever before because in the dark, we can't see.

This is the work I have to do alone. But I am not without any help. God is here. People love me, but they cannot be who my husband was in my life. That is gone, and I feel its loss. But God is here and He understands. He knows. He knows that I may look fine, but I am not. Not really.

Don't give me answers and religious guilt. I want presence. I want someone to see past the outside skin who knows the truth and isn't afraid of it.

I chose this picture of a beautiful buddleia bush in an enclosed garden with a gate that looks like bars on a cell. It's a great metaphor - beauty is deep within, but contained in a place of restriction.