Lost and Found

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who loses a loved one and doesn't feel untethered; life a bit like an unmoored ship. It seems pretty damn near impossible to not feel lost after loss. I hate the untethered feeling. I mean, who doesn't? We humans like to be in control. 

Even when I've read so much over these years about how there is no timeline for grief, I unknowingly and yet knowingly put myself on a timeline. The kind which tells me I should "be over" Dad's death by now. My mind has wanted to breeze past the heartache I still feel. My mind detaches when the girls still feel sad and I try to be strong for them. I've numbed out with busy-ness, the list goes on. 

The thing is, my heart knows I will never "be over" losing such a loving force in my life. So often, my Dad was an anchor to my unmoored ship. 

As this ship of mine has been aimlessly wandering, I'm learning it's one thing to name all that's been lost (and even that's a big hurdle with grief) but it's a whole other thing to allow oneself to tend to all that's been lost.

And that tending looks different for everyone and I believe the tending ebbs and flows. Sometimes it's marked by stopping at the cemetery to lay a flower at the grave. Maybe it looks like the questioning and reframing of your beliefs. Sometimes, it's cussing out the God whom you still believe saves. 

The tending may also be marred by a loss of hope...

It's been difficult to admit it has been hard feeling lost and it's been a struggle to feel hopeful. A culmination of the daily losses with Dad, losing Dad, normal life transitions with the girls, loss of hopes and dreams for work, a chaotic world and a pandemic have been the perfect breeding ground for it all. Don't get me wrong, I've seen beauty. There have been blessings upon blessings bestowed upon me; it is what has carried me through. Even still, it's been difficult to let that beauty seep into my heart. What's worse, I've kicked myself for not adhering to my "grief timeline" (whatever that is) and I have chided myself for not truly seeing the beauty. But, it's all so hard to do when you feel lost. 

Then, the other day I stumbled upon these words and even though I've heard sentiments such as this before, sometimes, it has to be just the right words and the right needed moment to truly hear. And as per usual, words are helping me heal. 

"What if the radiance of love transfigures and translates even death so it is no longer the darkness in which we are lost but the passage we travel on our way to being found." Sarah Clarkson, This Beautiful Truth

Death isn't the darkness in which we are lost. Death is the passage on our way to being found. Death of dreams, relationships, death of loved ones, and one day our own death doesn't have to be a place of lost-ness. It sure as hell may feel like it...

But, that radiance of love be it through people, music, art, nature, God himself, allows us to flip that narrative to one in which we are reminded that feeling loss and doubt, struggling to feel hopeful and eventually death itself is all needed and necessary on our journey to truly being found.