Choices

I continue to be amazed at how time keeps marching on. Though it seems implausible under the circumstances, the phrase "Life goes on" remains absolute.  The pain of grief has not decreased with time,  but it is different.  With much hard work and determination, the chaotic messiness of traumatic stress has diminished somewhat. In it's aftermath remains nothing  but deep, lonely emptiness.  The combination of trauma and grief seems to have eaten a cavernous hole at the very core of my being. 

Nearly everything that I do these days is accompanied by a feeling of apathy.  I go to my job and the passion and zeal that I once possessed is completely nonexistent. I am employed only for the sake of being employed.  The responsibilities that I have around my home feel empty and meaningless. Homemaking tasks: cooking, cleaning, paying bills, etc. are accomplished only because it is what is expected of me.  I look out my window and see jobs that should be done but I really don't care at all about them.   While I enjoy one to one time with close friends, social activities involving several people hold little or no appeal.  I have developed a monmouth sized aversion to large groups.  The definition of " large group" in my book is any number greater than 5 people. I have, for quite some time, had a lack of interest in the mundane.   I cannot recall the last time I actually looked forward to anything other than just being home with my family. The concept of excitement is utterly foreign.

If there is one thing that I have come to understand about the path of grief it is that, while we may not have had a say in whether or not we were placed on this road, the ensuing journey is filled with choices that only we can make.  In the first months after the accident the choices we made  were basic, made out of an innate will to survive.  The most difficult choices were whether or not to get out of bed each day and to put food in our mouth when the clock said to eat.  We went to the places that our schedules dictated and did the things that life deemed necessary.  In a sense, life, with it's continuous onward march, made our decisions for us.  As time moves on and we continue to trudge through the pain, the choices have increased in complexity.  A large part of the difficulty comes in recognizing that there are, indeed,  choices that need to be made lest we become stuck in  grief.

It goes without saying that in many ways Laynee's abscence has been a dominating focus in our life. Loss of this magnitude tends to become a pivotal point around which our very existence spins.  The pain, at times, seems larger than life, larger than our reason for living.  The enormity of sorrow's weight squashes any desire to move ahead.  Therein lies one of our greatest choices:  to embrace life, in spite of our sorrow.   The choice comes with acceptance that things will never be the same, that our hearts will always hurt.  Our heart's deepest longing is to be in heaven, the place where we will once again hold our precious child.    Yet, for now, we are here, residing on this earth.  We can remain stuck in our grief and mourning or we can join in the march onward that continues, regardless of our desire  to be a part of it. 

There is one question that hovers, like a cloud, over every choice that looms ahead of us.  What exactly is one to do with the sorrow and sadness?  How does one move forward when the heart is filled with such pain and emptiness?   My heart and soul have, in every concievable way, protested the direction that my life has taken.  I rebel against the idea of going anywhere or doing anything that allows the potential for more hurt and pain in my life.  I have found that I often become self preoccupied, which I recognize as sin that I need to cast aside and seek forgiveness for. I must acknowledge the truth, that God has a plan for my life.  While Laynee's time on earth is finished, mine continues.  Remaining stuck in grief is not what God wants for me, he desires that I move forward and embace the life that he has given me.  And so I come to him daily, hourly bringing all of the pain and placing it at the foot of cross.  With aching heart I accept that Laynee is gone, that she is not coming back and that I will never be the same.  I come to him, with heart void of dreams, goals or aspirations and seek to be led into whatever it is that he has for me to do.

 "The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;

your love, O Lord, endures forever—

do not abandon the works of your hands"

Psalm 138:8