Loss is the inevitable experience that touches our lives throughout its course. We lose our grandparents, aunts, uncles and eventually our parents. Along the way we may even encounter the loss of cousins, friends or even siblings. These losses are grandiose on our personal suffering and can have an impact on our day to day and even change the course of how we see life thereafter.

The way in which a person is taken from us defines the levels of grief we may traverse. If the death is of an illness; we grieve a little along the way while the person is still with us; at the time of death; and we miss them tremendously. The loss of that person’s existence can evoke an evaluation of oneself; the new you in your new normal. If a person is taken away suddenly; car accident, drunk driver, murder; with each of these being undeniably worse then the latter; the grieving process is compacted and more intense. Death by suicide, well is just unfathomable and can wreck an entire family completely off their steady course.

Unfortunately some of us even lose a child. That is the natural course of life backfiring. It completely goes against nature. There is no greater loss some would say.

The questions that run through your mind, the how, the why, the blame. The confusion and shock is enough to have even the strongest Christian family spinning on their heels for quite some time.  I know it did for ours.

The Holy Spirit immediately covered us when the realization came to pass that she was gone. We were all in a warm blanket-like covering. We saw and experienced peace, and clarity and I have never seen heaven so close in my entire life. We felt the warm love and strength and encouragement that could have only come from the Father (and about 100 knee and prostrate praying people).

A week later we were in shock. Six months later we were numb. We were all going down this hill of a journey without putting in any effort to strengthen our step. It was as though all the life was beaten right out of us. We were surely just going through the motions.

We all dealt with this differently. Some of us talked and verbalized, while others internalized. The kids went to therapy. We all went to a family group-therapy. I started to write.

Although, I didn’t write until a year after she was gone, I wish I had some of that early writing; the rawness of the experience to measure against today’s lot.

I know that in the first year I was discovering. I read everything I could get my hands on about death and the spirit and heaven. I researched like a mad woman, “what was this heaven really all about anyway? What did it look like? What did people do?” It was almost like, “well if my kid is there without me, I want to know what kind of place it is exactly.” I know the ironic-ness of that statement…. but it was the “mom” in me that had to know that she was really, really ok. I think I needed to do that to know that we would all really, really be ok, even though sometimes holding onto the grief felt like I was loving her more.

You don’t see entirely clear when you are grieving. I measured the pain as equal amounts of love. What I should have wanted to do was to love everyone I had still here on earth with me with as much intensity as I felt I loved her… That painful abundance.

One day I just got tired. I was tired of crying, of wondering, of not knowing, of having unanswered questions. I was tired of abusing myself.

In that numbing time I had started to drink so that I could feel; so that I could process. I couldn’t talk about her or the situation that surrounded her without displacing my emotions. I seemed flippant when talking about it to others who asked about it. That was completely a defense mechanism for my public anxiety of displaying emotions. Then in my private hours I needed something to unlock the door to my emotions so that I could process. I over ate. I would sit down at night and cram every snack food we had to “fill me” from this emotional emptiness that I had. All it ever did was make me obese and my stomach hurt.

Then one day I woke up and there was that epiphany moment where I just wanted to heal. I wanted to finally get out from under this this heavy blanket of darkness that was trapping us and come back to the land of the living. The trigger was my husbands words: I know you are not happy, you haven’t been happy for a very long time. It was two and a half years after she died. We were just surviving. It was that wake up call comment that set inside to the fibers of who I am. “You are just hanging out… You are STILL here”. From that “aha moment” I just wanted to be healthy and better. I changed my focus. I had to have the strength to “manually” change my focus. I realized that in order to “heal” I needed to heal ALL parts of me. I am spiritual, I am physical, I am mental, I am emotional. I had to get into God’s word with a fierceness. I had to get my body clean of impurities and healthy eating habits. I needed an outlet to clear my mind and think through my feelings and actions. I needed to be real with myself and ask God to tenderize me, not be afraid to feel, not be afraid to be real. I can break either way. The fears needed to go.

I have fallen off that path a few times, I’m not super human. But have always gotten back on it. When I get on that path, it is with more intensity and vigor for life and a passion for God and myself then before. HE is taking me on a journey and has never left my family nor my side. There are days that I can feel him from the inside out, and other days it is purely my brain telling me He is still here. I want to live and love with the intensity that God has shown me through this horrible experience. He walked through hell with me. When I pushed him away or did damaging things to myself he still had his hand on me, He is a stubborn parent. That is the kind of friend I want to be, the kind of mom I want to be and the kind of spouse I want to be.

Thank you God for showing me Christ through the Crap. You have saved my butt, yet again. I will forever miss her and carry her with me, but I leave the grieving and mourning and disabling fears and anxiety behind. I am meant to live, to thrive. I am still here… because there is more to do. Injured? Sure. Crippled? Nope! I know that our family has all lived life with more intensity now. We were shown that life is so much more than we ever expected. We are willing to take risks, we are willing to experience more – we dare to go where most probably wouldn’t. What do we have to lose? God’s got us.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

To find out more about traumatic loss and grieving:

http://www.journeyofhearts.org/grief/accident2.html