Sometimes topics come to me in a quick thought, or sometimes by something I have seen or heard but today it was a question someone asked: What are you writing about today? And my response was Pain, suffering, angst, grief & redemption. So here it goes.

The pain of loss is so profound that one cannot explain how it feels. I’ve attempted several times on this blog and in my book to put the pain to words and somehow I don’t think I’ve ever come close. In looking back at some of the poetry and other blog posts I do see the pain very clearly. But still those words – they are just words. They cannot put a speck of meaning to the hole in my heart, in my life and in my future that remains from the loss of my daughter.

The pain resides like a never healing sore. It gets better some days and gets worse on other days. How do I know that you might be thinking. Well every time I hear of a child who passes, it stops me dead in my tracks and immediately get teary-eyed and think “oh those parents”. I know their pain. I know it personally, inside and out. It’s tragic and scary and no one wants to think about it, talk about, write about – but it happens every day. Today my sore got worse.

Today I heard of the passing of little girl from cancer. Tears welled up in my eyes. I don’t even know this child, this family. But I immediately felt a connection. Sometimes when I hear of a child passing, it takes me back to the dark place I don’t like. The place that I don’t want to visit anymore. The nightmarish morning I lost my daughter. Sometimes it just makes me sad for that family. I feel their loss so very personally. Because I know today their sore begins.

The sore represents suffering. Suffering comes like waves of an angry sea. Crashing up on the rocks of our life causing you to gasp for your breath and just when you feel like you have your breath, the waves come back again and again and again. Knocking you down so many times you don’t think you can get up. But you do.

You get up because you have to. You go on because you have to. But the suffering it goes on. It just lessons over time and comes back only to remind you of what you have lost – as if you would forget. This is grief. The grief is a veil one wears over their wounded heart. The veil of grief is a heavy burden to bare. It weighs you down and keeps you from seeing joy.

The angst comes in how you start to live your life out after you have lost so much. It can close off your heart from love because you feel like loving someone again would just be impossible. You find yourself not letting people get close for fear they will die. As you have some disease that makes people die. I certainly thought so. I mean really – my mom, my grandmother, my daughter, my aunt. It’s a laundry list of death and destruction.

But thank God there is a God of redemption – God promises to comfort those who mourn. He promises to heal the broken-hearted. He offers hope that by the resurrection we will be reunited with our loved ones again some day. So yes there is pain, suffering, angst, grief & redemption and I am grateful that I know my God is standing beside me every step of the way.

Until next time

m