A Time to Mourn

A couple years into this battle with chronic illness, I remember a friend asking "How are you doing?" and being surprised when I said I was still grieving. Now, after four years, I am the one surprised when the grief hits me again.

Haven't I been through all this with God over and over? Haven't I learned to accept all the loss and change by now? Can't I trust that this is His good will for me for today?

But then He whispers that it's okay to cry again while He holds me closely. Cry, but trust.

"It's okay - it's all really going to be more than okay. Grieving how plans change - is part of the plan to change us.

It's okay to let go of comparing suffering, let go of avoiding or ranking or minimizing suffering and simply embrace suffering and all those suffering.

It's okay to not be okay, to not feel strong, to carry an unspoken broken. It's okay to be real and grieve losses and hold each other tight.

...Malakai pushes himself up in the hospital bed and he tells us something I will never forget, sunken half moons under his eyes:

"Looks like God knew my story was going to be bit different... and that's sorta cool... And this hard thing's going to make me rely on Him more --- and that's even more cool."

The grace that's in this moment is your mana.

Wish for the past and you drink poison.
Worry about the future and you eat fire.
Stay in this moment and you eat the mana needed for now."

- Ann Voskamp

"When I thought, 'My foot slips," 

Your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.

When the cares of my heart are many, 

Your consolations cheer my soul."

-Psalm 94:18-19

"He that lacks time to mourn, 
lacks time to mend.

  Eternity mourns that."

quoted in The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations, by Charlotte M. Yonge

(evidently from Philip van Artevelde by Sir Henry Taylor 1800-1886)