New!

Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been since I wrote something. It's time to start back, as the process of blogging really does help me to think things through.

Christmas is over. I survived. It still feels very raw, and I'm glad there is another year to go before I have to do it all again. The season has always been special for me: my birthday is just before Christmas, and my husband's birthday was early November. I love the special traditions of Christmas, but not so much the commercial hype and over-eating (now my clothes tell me that I've packed on some of the weight that fell off me last year).

It's a new year. A new beginning, yet there is so much that I can't lose and don't want to throw away.

I woke up last week some time and knew that it was time. I had to open up the bags of my husband's clothes that have been in the basement since he died. A friend has offered to make a quilt from some of them, and I knew there were others (some of them brand new for Christmas, and never worn) that could go to a secondhand shop.

I have also been feeling the need to de-clutter my house, to make it feel new again.

This past weekend, about half an inch of water came up in my basement after a heavy rain storm. As I was cleaning it up, the unplanned task of moving shelves and other furniture around was on my to-do list.

So now, I'm going through things and memories and crying along the way. I don't want to throw out everything of my husband's, like he never existed. I don't want to keep all his stuff, shrine-like, either. I need a half way point which incorporates him into my now - our history together as a couple, and him as a completed life.

There is a feeling that I want to redefine my life a little. I need to find the line between excising my husband from my life, and living to preserve him and all we lived together. Both are wrong. There is, however, a new person and a new way that is slowly arising from the ashes of loss.

I will never be the same, and I am struggling with that too. I am not who I was, and that is a good thing in some ways. I have lost so much and been through a great deal of trauma. Having had two months without my older daughter, I realize how abusive she was to me as well as her sister. I knew that logically, but now I feel it emotionally and in my bones.

I had not realized how much I was putting myself after others, at considerable cost to my well-being. It sounds "unChristian", but I need to put myself first more. So, part of my new year is to make more time for self-care. Instead of working hard to please everyone and keep everyone else going, I will work hard to look after my health and my state of mind.

Ps 40 talks about how God lifts us out of the mud and puts our feet on a rock, then places a new song in our mouth - a song of praise to Him.

That is what this year will be for me: a year to receive the new song.

That will show itself in many ways: I will find joy in worshipping my Lord who has loved me with an everlasting love, and who has not left my side for a moment through this dark path I am on; I will find a new way to handle my finances that is more "me" and less my accountant husband's system; I will move to develop friendships that are life and breath to me; I will cleanse my life of people who are unhelpful or toxic.

I am embracing a new life. I have to admit, I am not embracing it with my whole heart and great joy - this is out of necessity and with a heavy heart in so many ways. But I am determined that I will not be stuck in grief.

And, as much as I want to be free of the anger, cranky feelings, deep sadness and depression, heaviness and despair, I'm not ready yet. I have to live with myself like this still longer. It may be another year or more. I struggle to accept that.

I hate that I am no longer the person that comes more than halfway to meet people, and has the patience of Job. Not any more. Superwoman has moved out of my house. I am determined to learn to claim the space I live in, and to make it mine. Without apology too, but that comes a lot harder!!

This is a new day. I am breathing the breath that God gave me to breathe today, even while I live with the knowledge that my husband could not. But I will continue to breathe in and out each day I am alive. And I will continue to wish with every single fibre of my being that he could have been able to get the help he needed to allow him to breathe the breath God gave him.

Today is new, and I will walk forward into the newness God has for me. I'm opening my mouth. Lord, fill it with your song!