As usual, there's not a title to cover it all

"I walked a mile with pleasure

she chattered along the way,

but left me none the wiser

with what she had to say.

I walked a mile with sorrow

and never a word said she;

but oh, the things I learned from her

when sorrow walked with me."


If anyone knows who wrote that please tell me so I can give them credit. I read it a long time a go and it stuck with me but I can't for the life of me find where I read it. It's so true, isn't it? Any form of sorrow causes us to step back and look at life differently. I'm not big on rating our sorrow-saying "yours is worse than mine..." because it's all things that we didn't want causing our sorrow. No matter what is causing your pain it's pretty safe to assume that you didn't ask for it. Sorrow can be turned to beauty though, I know that for sure now. There have been hardly any fewer words here on my blog but I hope that in the coming weeks I'll be able to share with y'all the wonder of what God is doing. My goal is to update more often and as much I'd like to say it'll be every day I think we all know life might intervene at some point ;) Grace is a great thing to offer others, isn't it? Ha


This last week I started meeting with other people who have walked in my shoes. Many people have recommended the same group specializing in helping those of us touched by unexpected death of a loved one. Thursday night I went with a new friend who also lost her husband in the same way so we carpooled and it wasn't scary to walk into that first meeting. There are many things that we talked about in the group that I won't share to respect other's privacy. There are parts that I will tell you about though. Things that I felt sitting across from another person whose grief, at this point, knows no limits. Her loss is more recent than mine so as I listened to her talk I thought about how different my grief is now than it was months ago. She described standing in line at Target and wanting to scream, "How is the world still moving? How can you people go on with life as if nothing happened???" I remember those days, and every once in a while I still have them. For the most part, though, seeing how the world moves on is strangely comforting. New life, new hope is my goal and what I am constantly looking for now. I wanted so much to tell her that the days are coming where you can check out at Target and not feel trapped. I wanted to speed her process up for her so she's not in constant pain but if I could do that I suppose I'd be wondering why someone didn't do that for me! If I had the magic wand I'd make all pain go away. Wouldn't you? So many people ask me, "Well then why doesn't God?"


Now's the part of our program where I'd like to hand over the keyboard to one of my pastor friends.


I'm not going to go into too much depth here, mainly because it's 9:00 and y'all know I'm fixing to turn into a pumpkin. I mainly want to tell you that I don't know all of the answers about why God doesn't fix things the way I'd like them to be fixed. I'm sure not sure why God chose to let Sean die the way he did. I don't get it any more than you do. Like I wrote a few days ago I have to fight fear every single day. I fight and fight to see the hope that He has for me. The only difference between me and the person falling apart at Target is that God is sustaining me today and I don't feel like yelling. Now tomorrow I might.


Yes, I am getting used to our new normal. I'm enjoying things again and laughing and snorting and the whole bit. I used to feel guilty for doing things that made me happy. I felt like I was not honoring Sean by carrying on without him. That's crazy, I know. It was neat hearing another person say that same thing on Thursday though. I'm being validated for feeling things I thought I was crazy for feeling. I mean, none of us wants to be crazy. On the crazy note, that's another reason why I've been MIA. When we got home from Florida I over-committed myself and have been trying to keep my head on straight since. Today we stayed home and it was wonderful. I'm typing from my actual computer at my desk which has been covered in papers and sewing projects for about...hmmm...six months. Turns out staying home gives you time to put things away. I know, hard to believe. Maybe I should stay here more often.


Okay now it's really past my bedtime. Talk to you tomorrow.