When It Feels Like Too Much

I wrote another blog post but found with the current events, it didn’t seem appropriate. There’s a lot going on and it feels like too much.  Two years of Covid and quarantine, our own personal stories of loss and grief, and now a war across the ocean that we can’t escape knowing about.  It’s a lot.  How do we respond when it all feels so heavy?

This quote by Henri Nouwen gives a perspective.  “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

One of the outcomes of my own journey through grief has been opening myself up to the pain of others.  I can’t not feel something when I hear of someone’s loss. I can’t not enter while watching from the sidelines.  Compassion has made a permanent parking place in my soul.  As we open ourselves to be compassionate, we discover we have something to offer. 

We can give hope. We can wait in hope.

We can pray in hope. We cling to hope,

knowing our prayers are heard,

even if we never see the answers.

There’s a verse in Zechariah 9:12 (CSB) that gives us a picture of this, “Return to your stronghold, you prisoners who have hope.”  Prisoner of hope?  Could this be where we find ourselves today?  We can be captive to hope, while in the midst of pain, brokenness, and despair.

We have hope. We can pray; We can bring our tears to God. We can offer up sighs and groans to our Heavenly Father for those we see suffer. Let us be taken hostage by hope.

"Grateful Yet Grieving"

FREE ebook by Pam Luschei | Click HERE To Download

Out of the Blue

Last week while I was driving and waiting at the stoplight, I glanced in my rearview mirror.  The driver of the car behind me was wearing a hat, glasses, and had a beard just like my husband.  It was a trigger that took my brain on an unexpected ride out of the blue.  The light changed and I drove on not looking in the rearview mirror.  Memories of my husband came flooding in my mind without warning.  I was jolted into a space of remembering his face and it made me smile.  It also gave me an ache in my soul.  It’s a strange combination of sweetness and pain as I continue on my journey. 

Dr. Patrick O’Malley writes, “What we’re after is to live our grief story going forward, to embrace it and the feelings that are associated with it. We grieve because we love.  And the feelings of grief and love that we experience will come up in different contexts as our lives change.”  These words remind me that grief and love continue to coexist no matter how long ago we lost our loved ones.

There will be triggers throughout our lives.  Anticipatory grief will be associated with dates on the calendar, special occasions, weddings, and funerals.  The last wedding I attended designated a special seat that remained empty for the bride’s mother who had died.  Acknowledgment was given out of love.  Then there will be the spontaneous triggers that come without a memo, the ones that we can’t see coming.  A place, a smell, a person, or an image that signals our brain to engage can feel unwelcome.  However, at the same time, the hesitation we have to feel our grief again is an invitation to acknowledge how we loved our person and honor them in our remembering.  Once again, there is evidence that we grieve because we loved as we “live our grief story going forward.”

"Grateful Yet Grieving"

FREE ebook by Pam Luschei | Click HERE To Download