Help

 It’s 4am and I’m trying again. 

I’m a little creepy.

 

She died in a little cottage in my backyard.  I spent every minute of her last week with her.  I miss her every day.  

I went over to the cottage this morning and turned the camera back on to watch her little dog while I’m away. There’s no recordings stored, but there are a few still shots captured when movement was detected.  I scrolled through some moments of the night she died. There they were; the moment I got up to go to the bathroom and everything was fine. The moment she breathed her last and I sat up in bed next to her. The moment her son arrived, the hospice nurse, her daughters, everyone who loves her most. 

It felt a little creepy looking back through those moments. I'll never forget that night but these images were different than my memories.  This was seeing myself and surroundings from just a little bit of a distance.  How cramped I was from sleeping next to her so I could be close.  How just fine things were one moment and how sad they were the next.  It was odd to see myself going to get a cloth to wipe her face, putting my arm around my husband, and then standing at a little more distance with everyone who was a little creeped out by a dead body just beginning to grow cold.  All of that was loving and good.  So much so that I've decided to go into Hospice.  

I want to be there with people who get to hear that last breath, then have to go on living without the one that's been their every minute.  That probably makes me a little creepy.

in my hands

The assignment was to create. Art has a way of making us feel something that’s hard to describe. Sometimes it helps describe things we feel.

 I have felt shame. So much shame. I feel other things now too, but sometimes the shame lingers.


It seems strange that a fish would make me feel something else but he did.



Feeling the papier-mâché heavy and wet in my hand made me feel sad.
My beautiful little fish was gone.
 Loving dogs, well -that makes sense to everyone. Loving a fish seems odd. At least to my husband.

I needed to create something from this tiny loss.
 Shaping a form in my hands was cathartic. Covering it with pansies, reverent.

Delight

There is a very important subject we must not miss.



https://www.thisamericanlife.org/692/the-show-of-delights

If you can only listen to a few minutes then just skip to Act 1.
This is good stuff y’all.

Weak

It’s been a week since we first met. It’s hard to trust new people, I know.
It’s hard to trust yourself.
We just have to make up our minds to DO this thing. Dive in, get to work, and do what we need to do to get to where we want to be.
Together and individually.

The hardest part isn’t the work- though it must be done.
The hardest part isn’t coming back week after week.

The hardest part is putting away the brave face.
The hardest part of healing
is being, or at least feeling
    weak.

When we are weak He is Very Strong.

Skills

SKILLS WE USED WHEN 

              WE

are no longer

 were 

little girls.

Don't work anymore.

Are still hurting.

He Is

Heaven on earth. 
Freedom from guilt and shame. 
But first, all of the guilt and all of the shame.

Pain must be felt, and felt deeply.  Visceral, tangible, palpable to the bone, and sometimes even audible. 
Pain hurts. 

Fear is felt. Terror, sheer terror and agony. 
Not just as one might be frightened hearing a story but the very real terror of a life in peril. A real threat  of loss of life, of loss of self. 


All of this journey, all of this pain at great cost with no reward. 
No heaven for him, not really. Just a view of the victory.  There are
still his own pains and processes and peril. And those made greater by the exhaustion that comes from already fighting the battle. Battles that may or not be won as they are not his own. 

Parenting children, wooing lovers, paying penance, punishing criminals, all in a days work. 
Carrying soldiers who cannot carry on. Toting them out of battle, off the battle field to safety - only to return to the line of fire again and again until the battle is won.  And battle after battle waged, until the war is won.  
And that is just what he did for me. I’m not the only one. 
He saved my life. The life of my family and of each member of it. And of the families to come. Safe from the ghosts of the past and from the monsters that still prey. And the victims still willing to be preyed upon. 

All of hell on earth beaten back, chased away, defeated. For heaven. For heaven sake.  All by a single warrior. And a warrior; he is.