Picking up the Pieces and Healing Tears

I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but last night I felt so much better after I just let it all out. I waited until after I thought my husband was sleeping and I cried and cried and cried. I had a mountain of grief sitting on my chest and a million different emotions that can hardly be handled that were desperate for some relief. So I cried and it HELPED.

Nothing got solved, just released. Maybe that's what it was.

Aside from the million emotions, I didn't get a chance to blog away my heart. This added to the reality of facing my grief, which at times, is unbearable.

On a different note, I find it difficult to talk with people. Just simple conversation makes my brain crazy. It's not that I don't want to (or maybe I don't?) but it is so hard to FOCUS. I have never been more scatter-brained and that makes me crazier. I also find myself avoiding certain people because I don't want to talk about the frivolous things in life and they don't want to talk about my baby who died too soon. So I become a hermit who crawls out when I MUST be ok or when I finally reach a "safety zone".

On top of that, I haven't been able to go see her. Her marker is so pretty but its ugly too. It just urks me that she is in the ground. My brain knows she is in Heaven, but my heart can't get past her body being buried - the very one I felt kicking and moving inside, is buried. I can't write in words what that does to me. I hate it. I used to love going to see her and I wish I could see past the marker that so delicately marks her putrid grave. Why did I spend so much time trying to make it look so pretty??!! It is not going to matter! I thought it was the last thing I could do for her. Now it just keeps me away. I feel guilty, angry and disgusted that I can't make it better. It hurts so much to see her like that. I mean to go this Friday. She will have been gone four months. I want to go Friday, but it's going to be hard.

I thought about it like this.

In this house there is this beautiful, fragile yet perfect glass vase. And it sits in a place where it can display its beauty to everyone in the house, at all times. But one day it gets knocked over and it doesn't just break - it shatters throughout the entire house, in every corner and under every stool, table and furnishing. No matter where you walk in this house there are sharp remnants of this once-beautifully adorned glass vase. But the beauty is gone and all that's left is a mess and pain with every step you take. As I think about the glass pieces everywhere I go, I can't help but think I am just leaving the glass pieces on the ground to continue to wound my already wounded heart. How do you pick up the pieces? How do you tell yourself it's time to find a way to heal? When does the pain stop tearing you apart everywhere you go? When do the little things in life that bring you back to the darkest hour stop bringing you to tears? How does life return to a sense of normalcy after your innocence is gone? How do you pick that first piece off the ground and not feel guilty?

I don't know. But I do know that it has got to start soon. Some sort of stepping forward. Not "moving on" or "getting over it" as people say without the slightest idea of how those careless words rend your heart, but a true finding of what it means to live with this grief and without the guilt of leaving her behind.

It won't happen overnight and I know these next few months and even years will try my relationships. I hope that my friends and family can be patient. I pray that I can have grace. I know that I serve a good God. There are few things that I know for certain anymore but one is that He is right there, ready to help me pick up that first piece. And the second and the third.

...forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark...

Philippians 3:13,14