Good Grief

May... 

This month carries a lot of emotion for me.

It brings back memories of graduating.  Graduating from high school, anxious to move forward with my life and get away from the hometown that I never thought I would move back to. 10 years ago I graduated from college which I still believe was a miracle of Jesus since I switched majors 4 times and had a hard time...well, er.. making it to class.

I got engaged in May of 2005.  A few months prior I happened to "conveniently" find some jewelry store business cards in my boyfriend's room... so every time we went out for 3 months or so I had my nails done wondering if that was the night he was going to propose!  I never thought it would be a night that we were running errands and grabbing dinner...that gorgeous night at the beginning of May he put a ring on my finger and made me the happiest girl alive.

It was the month of May that I found out I was pregnant with Isaiah in 2007 and with Samuel 5 years later. Oh, the unfathomable joy of seeing 2 lines on a pregnancy test... screaming, running around showing everyone a stick you just peed on!

With all this to celebrate in May, it also brings grief.

I mourn with women that struggle on Mother's Day- those that are battling infertility, miscarriage, the loss of a baby, those that don't have a good relationship with their mom's or not a relationship at all.  I think of the single moms that are doing it all by themselves on the one day they should get a break. This day brings sorrow to so many.

May 10th brings the anniversary of Joel's brother, Drew.  It's been 8 years since Joel got that awful phone call that he took his own life.  We still mourn and miss him.

Grief is unpredictable. You can be doing fine and then there is some sort of trigger that sets off the emotion.  It can catch you by surprise and consume you for a moment, for days, years...

The sneaky thing crept up on me unexpectedly in the last few weeks.  Last year, on May 23rd we buckled our foster son in to his car-seat and said goodbye when he got adopted by a family member that lives out of state.  We got him when he was 16 days old and had him for his first 11 months of life.  There is so much that we celebrate with his story, yet it was a loss to us in some ways.  As foster parents, you sign up for grief but it doesn't make it any easier.  We are grateful to get updates and pictures now and then, but he was our son and now he is not.  I don't know how else to describe it.
I never expected that this would feel like an anniversary of a death... but I find myself grieving in some of the same ways- I'm anticipating May 23rd, replaying in my head what was happening at this time last year, crying randomly and looking at his pictures.  I can't shake the thought of him, seeing his chubby face and big dark brown eyes before I go to sleep at night.

Grief is so complicated and multifaceted.  It's hard to wrap our human brains around because we tend to want a solution to any problem and we want closure.  But there's never really a "solution,"  we just learn to live on despite our loss.  We want it to stop, but the truth with grief is that it never ends... it just morphs and changes.  The loss doesn't get easier, we just learn to adapt to it more as time goes on.

Grief can invade in a variety of ways- death, job loss, loss of good health, a move, a failed marriage, a broken relationship, a lost dream and apparently letting go of a foster child.  Even grieving the state of the world- the darkness and brokenness that surrounds us here in our own backyards and overseas.
Sometimes it's too heavy to bear...

As I was sharing this weight with a dear wise friend last week- she said,
"sit down and have tea with your grief."
It's a way of embracing the emotion when it comes and responding to what your heart needs in the moment. Now, we all know that it's not healthy to wallow in a dark pit... but there is a difference between engaging the grief and letting it swallow us whole.  When we can name the emotion, sit down and have tea with it - there is opportunity for healing to the open wounds that haven't scarred over yet. There is opportunity to honor our loved ones, be beautifully molded by it and learn to embrace it as part of who we are.  If I don't sit down with my grief- the temptation is to put walls up, to not want to love deeply, to close my home off to kids, to keep them at an arms distance and to get bitter and angry...

I choose tea.

We are all grieving someone or something- big and small.
Take the time to have tea with it and make it good grief.