Grief

Several years ago a good friend encouraged me to take a couple of classes at the college.  Well, encouraged would be an understatement.   Insisted is more like it.  She could see, as good friends often can, that I needed to step outside the circle of insecurity, fear and grief I found myself in and think some new thoughts.

She was right.  I thought new thoughts and realized something profound.

I am smart.

One of the classes I took was Human Development.  I found the class fascinating; I learned lots of fancy scientific names for things I had already experienced.  For example; did you know baby talk is called motherese?  It plays an important roll in the language development of infants.

Before I had my own kids, I thought baby talk was ridiculous and vowed to never use it.

Right.  Like that happened.

Each student in the class was required to do an oral report about one of the subjects in our text.  I decided to study grief, which was actually pretty depressing.  But as I waded knee-deep into all the stages of grief, something dawned on me.

I had never lost anyone close enough to me to experience deep-seated, gut wrenching grief.

And then I had another profound moment of realization.    

You don't need to lose someone to death to lose someone.  The death of trust and relationships can bring deep-seated, gut wrenching grief.

It can obsess your mind and take your breath away.

My text book didn't tell me how to overcome grief, to work through the difficult stages quickly and get to the acceptance and hope that inevitably come at the end.  Grief doesn't operate on our time table, we can't dictate when it comes and goes, and there are times when we think it will never go.  Never.

But it lessens.  And eventually it may even go.

God promises to walk us through dark places.  If you are there, please trust him.

And I know, without a shadow of a doubt,  that he is the author of one human's development.

Mine.