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Hold on until December 22
We still have 38 days until December 21st, the shortest day of the year. Thirty-eight more days of increasing darkness. And, I don’t know how you’re doing, but I may be limping to December 22, when the darkness will start receding.
Yet, my struggle isn’t so much with whether Elizabethtown is on Eastern Time (it is), or whether we need to leave an hour early to catch a flight out of Nashville (I think so?).
My struggle is with the ever encroaching darkness that steals a little bit more of our light every day.
Remembering
I can’t undo the losses each of us have lived through. I can’t bring back those whom each of us are grieving. However, I offer these thoughts, and I pray they provide some comfort.
How are you?
So, what are we supposed to do when we’re not okay? What about when it feels like the world has fallen apart around us, and we aren’t sure how to pick up the pieces? What about when the deathiversary of our person is in a few days and we’re grieving their absence a little extra today? Or when something reminds us of what has been lost and we could really use someone to listen to our story again?
What about those days when you’re just sad?
What are you supposed to say then?
Seeking order in the chaos
To be honest, what usually pushes me outside is the maddening admission that I can’t undo any of our losses. I can’t make any of the consequences we are living with right themselves. I can’t make others understand the grief we still feel. I can’t fix any of it.
Good words to sit with
It might seem odd then, that last week I decided to give meditation a try. Mainly I did it because I realized that my time of meditation is whatever I want it to be. Although basically it’s sit quietly, breathe in, hold, and breathe out. Yup, that very practice which threw me off yoga is what I’m attempting to do again. But this time it’s different.
Grief is something I never asked for
So many times I sat at our kitchen bar and wept as I read words I needed to hear. Words I wish had been spoken over a younger me when my mom died, I moved away from home for the first time, my husband and I had a miscarriage, and so many other losses. I wept knowing it was now my task to walk with others and help make their way a little less painful.