Through the Grieving Process at Last

A Sunday in June (1991)

Which card to choose

Which lie to pretend

Needing to confront betrayed expectations

Afraid of answers

Other cards lovingly pasted

With construction paper hopes

Standing alone on a stone mantle

Accusing an empty chair

Pain, not from the Did, but the Didn’t

From the empty ache gnawing at trust

Anger. Pain. Fear.

Crashing, pounding

Raging over a sea of need

Scrambling for shelter – sanity

Discovering only equal rage

Torrential waves to battle those slashing

The only defense

In, out, In, OUT

Raging at nothing. Everything.

Desperately seeking calm

But fearing to see in the glass

Drown in the recognition

Suffocate on surfacing need

Choke on salt water.

Which card to choose?

The day after that last post, I shared with my home group (a small weekly church gathering) about how awesome it was to discover the peace of giving emotions up to God. As I talked to my husband later that night, I found myself getting repeatedly angry with my friend. I felt bad about that and tried to shove it away. My husband then mentioned the grieving process and how it sounded like I was in the anger stage.

The next morning I read up on it. I discovered a few things. First of all, when I had emailed my friend a few days after she ended our friendship (to say my goodbye and put in my 2 cents worth, I rationalized at the time), I realized I wasn't writing from a place of peace, but from a place of bargaining...see you don't really want to abandon me because... I was in short manipulating her. I felt bad (and in wounded pride, also a little stupid) but realized that writing to say I was sorry and that I get it now would just compound it. I had to let it go and trust God to be my justification. I also realized that each emotion was OK; it was part of the process, and I was just to offer the whole range of them, messy as they were, up to God. Yesterday I truley felt acceptance, and today there is calm even when my thoughts range over our friendship's memories and unrealized plans. That is the power of God, because it was only a week ago today that she called me.

I also realized that I had never fully let the grieving process run its course before, despite repeated abandonment, rejection and abuse from early childhood through adulthood. I had felt the emotions well up and had drowned in them. Not realizing that there was a way out, I had gone under countless times (many times rocking on the floor holding my knees and begging to die). I wallowed in either the anger or the depression, giving it life and feeding it breath, beating myself up with it because feeling those two intense emotions was at least feeling, until the numbness finally set in, which I attributed to peace.

Grief is OK. With God it is manageable. With God all things are possible. He's really showing me that this last 6 months or so.