“Last night was rough. Woke up numb this morning. Praying God will hold to his promise and heal my pain. Where is God? I am abandoned. I have been angry, I know… I am trying. I remember once when was so mad at Bruce. He just reached out and hugged her. At first she resisted, but he wouldn’t stop hugging her. Instead he said, ‘You need this hug. You need to know I love you.’ … That is what I need from God…”
~ Linda, Feb 2013
Surviving versus living… That is where I found myself after Bruce passed away. I believe that conflict eventually becomes the choice of every grieving person. In the beginning, I remember the pain was so intense it took everything in me just to keep breathing. Getting out of bed and moving through my day was a moment by moment miracle. The basics of survival, like breathing and eating, which normally are done without much thought, not only required thought, they required will-power. It took everything in me just to survive.
I felt so very alone and isolated. None of my friends or family had been through this… I didn’t know who to turn to or how to ask for what I needed. Yet, I knew I was not the only person to have been on this path. I knew it because of the quotes and Bible verses that kept popping up around me, such as:
I am bowed down and brought very low;
All day long I go about mourning…
I am feeble and utterly crushed;
I groan in anguish of heart…
For I am about to fall,
And my pain is ever with me.
~ Psalm 38: 6,8,17
Maybe it sounds weird, but it brought me a bit of comfort to know others had gone before me on this path. Others knew how deep this pain could be… Maybe I was not so alone after all. Because of my faith, I also found promises of hope in verses such as:
My sorrow is beyond healing.
My heart is faint within me…
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?…
‘For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the Lord.
~ Jeremiah 8:18,22 and 30:17
AND
Then you shall call and the Lord will answer,
you shall cry for help and he will say, “Here I am!”
~ Isaiah 58:9
And yet, I still seemed to feel utterly abandoned and alone… I still felt like I was merely surviving for a very long time. I did a lot during that time in an attempt to heal… I attended a support group, started journaling, continued running, did a lot of reading and expressed myself through painting and gardening. Yet, even through all of that, I just couldn’t quite get past merely surviving.
It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well, I must agree. I believe I did all of those things in preparation for my teacher…
It was ten months later when I started making the turn from mere survival toward truly living again. What was the trigger? Someone (a stranger) reached out and as my mother would say “entered my life to become ‘God with skin on.'”
It started simply as a guest speaker at our office. As a business and life coach, she started the session by asking us to decorate a banner with words stating our purpose, why we were there or how we felt about our life. I simply wrote, “survival.” As soon as she spotted it, she came behind me, drew a big heart around my one word and wrote “support.” With such a simple gesture, she had become “God with skin on” for me and given me that “hug” I had begged for months earlier.
Then, she offered me the unconditional support I needed by taking it a step further…
She quickly became my coach, and because I was ready, my teacher. It’s funny but we rarely talked about my grief. We talked about Bruce, my family, work… We talked about life. She reminded me that I was not alone. She reminded me that I needed to look for God in all things or I would never see God in anything. In less than 6 months, she taught me the difference in survival and living.
She re-introduced me to life… my life… and I am forever grateful.
At this point I want to be sure I am perfectly clear. Grief is real; it is individual; and it is not selfish. To avoid the time needed to work through your emotions and self reflection is not healthy… It is absolutely necessary. However, when the time is right (and it will be different for each person), the healing, (the movement from mere survival to living life), can begin.
So what makes the difference in living versus merely suviving? It is finding the divine energy within each of us. Then, using that source to become a divine reality for someone else by simply being the love and acceptance we are seeking from the world around us.
In other words, it is using the love within us to move from a place of “self” to a place of service.
Polish your heart
so that it reflects
God’s love
to the world around you
~ Linda, February 2016
What about you? How did you find your way on your grief journey? Did you ever feel like you were merely surviving? How did you come to terms with it? Or do you still need support in that area? Would you be willing to share your story or your thoughts?
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