It's been a month. . .

. . . and what a month it has been.  To be fair, the beginning of the school year is always a little crazy, and I didn't help myself by jet-setting the second half of summer.

I feel like I've written this entry in my head over and over and over, and it's finally time to put pen to paper. . . or fingers to keyboard.  I forget sometimes that just thinking through things isn't quite enough, that for me at least I need to write things out both to organize and to dump the thoughts, whether it's out there for the world to see or not.  I've been taking better care of my body since I've returned from New York, so I need to remember to take care of my mind as well.

I may have said some of this before, but I finally made a connection between two assumptions that are both wrong:

1) I never thought that this journey would get easier. . . but I did not anticipate that it would get harder.

2) When I chose to return to the world of the living January before last, I thought that it was a once-for-all-time decision. . . I did not think it would become a fight, sometimes daily.

For the first statement, I am an analyst.  I research and look things up and try not to assume that everything applies to everyone but also that nothing applies to me.  Yet somehow I'm still surprised when I've seen things like "Mental-health experts estimate it takes about two years for a widow or widower to absorb what has happened and be capable of making major decisions again." and look back and go. . . oh.  Well. . . that makes sense.  So you read things about how grief changes, and shifts, and ebbs and flows. . . but maybe those were meant to be used as sugar coated synonyms for "harder."  "Much harder."  I don't know.  I do know that I'm still bad about being able to talk about Cam and yet wanting to do that more than anything.

As for the second statement, that has been all the more shocking to me.  Not that I thought that everything would just fall completely into place, but I'm an all or nothing type person.  Maybe it's just that desire for things to be black or white that helped me to get out of the haze in the first place, but still. . . the haze is there.  It probably is emitted from the grief rock, and so if you stop for too long, you find yourself surrounded by it.  But the thing about haze is that it's weightless.  It's only real power is to keep you from seeing far forward, but once you start moving, things clear up.


I read this a couple mornings ago, the whole chapter is powerful but Eugene Peterson ends the paraphrase of Isaiah 40 this way:

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob, or, whine, Israel, saying, “God has lost track of me.  He doesn’t care what happens to me”?  Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?  God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.  He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.  He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath. And he knows everything, inside and out.  He energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts.  For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall.  But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.  They spread their wings and soar like eagles, they run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind.