I can wear a brocade of joy, letting it open both my shoulders and my heart, because the hearts that remain with me offer much love, much hope. I'd rather bury the sadness beneath my real or fabricated happiness than let others see or feel the weight of a heart not yet healed.
Consequently, there are moments when Grief calls to me.
Careful to recognize the difference between grief and self-pity, I am finding it is just as important to sit with Grief. Like regular exercise, prayer, and practicing happiness, I must acknowledge with intention the parasitic friend that found residence with us . Failure to do so results in a torn spirit, a weakened heart.
Every moment presents a new event I can't share with Taylor, and thus a new death. I texted my Mama the other day. It wasn't a special day, no significance of any kind but I just missed my girl - so that's what I wrote. "I miss my girl, Mama." I usually don't share those thoughts as there's nothing anyone can do or say to make it better or change that feeling and handing someone that impossible responsibility is cruel. But I did. She wrote back,
"How could it be otherwise..."
And so, while my sweet mama would never give me permission to give in, she, again in the wisdom only a mother possesses, gave me permission to live with a broken heart.
I've been fighting to fix it - to fix my heart, to be the happy girl I used to be - only to lose time and time again. Whatever healing remains to come, I recognize it comes only when I sit and submit with Grief, when I separate the story that is from the story I wrote for us, when I read the chapters lived with great gratefulness and cherish the memories of the pages torn out by tragedy,
I miss my daughter.
I miss who we were with her.
I miss who I was.
"How could it be otherwise."
So after I sit, after I cry, after I pull at all of the width and breadth of the black and white synthetic quilt, I will get up, put on my brocade of joy, whether sincere or not, and I will move forward - for the warmth of the joy I have known and the weight of the importance of the joy to come.
"How could it be otherwise."
#golighttheworld
Isaiah 40:31 "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not be faint. Teach me, Lord. Teach me, Lord to wait."