This one is no different.
It's been nearly two months since the incident. It came swift, it came ruthlessly, and it ripped a hole in my chest that I am still trying to control the bleeding to. I lost something dear to me, and now I'm just trying to make it through the "I feel like I'm dying" phase.
I relate it all to a war movie scene where a bomb goes off and the main character's hearing gets dulled into this low-volume, high-pitched ring and the camera goes in a sort of hazed slow-motion manner.
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I ache with this loss. I find it difficult to get out of bed, begging God to give me a break. "Lord!" I cry, "don't let me go through this. Let me wake up and it all be a dream. Let the last piece of my life be a bad dream and let me wake up and be grateful for what I have and thankful that that nightmare was just that--a nightmare."
But I haven't woken up. Every morning, I am stabbed in the chest with an alarm clock telling me to face another day I'm not ready to face, and honestly, sometimes don't think I'll ever be completely ready to face it. I don't want to.
"How long did it take you to get over feeling like this?" I ask people who tell me they've experienced what I'm going through.
"Oh! It took me years!" they say. I can't do this for years. I'm not strong enough to do this for years. "Lord, deliver me! Please, deliver me or kill me, but don't force me through this." (I am kind of a child sometimes). Each time I've begged for a pulmonary embolism, fatal heart arrhythmia, or aneurysm, He's said no. The only evidence I have for this is my lack of any of these moralities thus far.
If you are experiencing anything like that--if you can't eat, can't sleep, can't think without feeling the shards of a broken heart piercing the pericardium that used to contain it--it is my most sincere prayer that you will find solace in knowing you aren't alone.
No, this season is not without purpose no matter how it may feel. Want lessons? I'm giving lessons.
1. You have to believe what you know, and not just what you feel.
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| http://divampire.tumblr.com/post/21976362967/listening-to-michael-bubl |
Sometimes, it doesn't feel like God is good. It doesn't feel like today is worth going through. It doesn't feel like this season will ever come to a close, but I am being continually reminded by people around me that it does end. The depression lifts. The breakup stops cutting you like a knife. The job gets better. God comes through, even if it doesn't feel like He will. Take encouragement from Hosea, where a people so fallen from God had to endure what sounds like hell on earth, but He always promises to come through on our behalf for His glory.
My biggest tip here is to reflect back on when God has come through for you in the past. Psalm 26:3 says, "for I have always been mindful of your unfailing love and have lived in reliance on your faithfulness." Of course it's not always easy to think back to blessings when you feel like your life is in shambles, but take it one step at a time. This is not a race. Remember things one-by-one and keep a record of them. When you're alone and the weight of the world starts crushing you again, pull out that record and play it over and over, reminding yourself of exactly who is carrying you.
2. The world is full of beautiful people...
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3. Holding on is easier when you visualize it.
I feel like I'm in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane, and I'm drowning.
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| http://anelectricant.tumblr.com/post/122202245276/im-drowning |
4. Healing is not linear.
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I hate this one. It upsets me to no end, but there is also no avoiding its truth. When someone experiences a severe physical trauma (a car accident, for example), the immediate pain is excruciating and the future is terrifying, but everyone thinks that as soon as you get to the hospital, the rest is downhill. Hate to burst the bubble, but prolonged immobilization or a long bone fracture are high risk factors in blood clots, and the compound fracture you're probably babying has a very good chance of becoming infected. Emotional healing is not always linear, either. You have good days, and bad days, and ok days and, days you wish never existed, and days that make you wonder why you've ever cried. It's ok to not feel ok at a certain milestone. Congratulate yourself for the milestone and muscle through to the next. You can, I promise.
5. Take some time to be alone with the pain.
I hate this more than number 4. (So sorry about all the physical metaphors, but that's just how I process stuff.) When people get burned too severely or scrapped up too harshly, the medical procedure to heal that injury is something called "debriedment," where the patient is forced to have the comfortable layer of infected or defective slough removed from the wound, exposing the raw tissue underneath in order to give that tissue an opportunity to repair itself, and it can be quite painful (look it up if you want, but I'm a nurse now and can say that kind of crap without a citation).
For me, the alone-time in the company of my pain is usually in the shower, where everything else is crying, so I probably should too.Take the time to say "this sucks and I don't want to take another second of it!" Cry it out if you have to. Scream into a pillow. Run until your lungs give out. Just give weight to the fact that you ache, because believe me when I say that pain has a way of making a forced entrance if not welcomed in for a brief visit every now and again.
I'm about to sound like everyone who has tried to encourage me in the past couple of months (and at times, I have resented them a little), but this will pass. Each day gets a little easier, and by the time two weeks has rolled around, you realize you don't spontaneously burst into tears. At three, you don't dwell on the loss as much as you initially did. At four, you don't cradle the hurt as often (these may go in a different series and at different times for you). Instead, you take on a new awareness of God's provision in your life (be it a new job, new friends, a knack for obsessive baking). You lean on people you never realize cared. You discover things about yourself that you never considered before. And over time, the clouds roll back just a little further.
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| "so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs. You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy." Psalm 65:8 |
I too, have been hurt. It sucks. Like, it really sucks. When you wake up in the middle of the night, to turn to your partner and tell them that you love them, but they are no longer there. To constantly check your phone for some sort of text that will make you smile because you know that they care, only to realize that they no longer do. To have that feeling of being loved by someone that doesn't "have" to love you and then be discarded like so many dogs on country roads. Sometimes I question God's intent when he gave us (some of us at least) the ability to feel so deeply. To become immersed in emotion and to be so willing to let it engulf you, that you hypothetically drown in it. That is the kind of emotion that has caused me to fall subject to "emotional hardening" (I am an English Grad and this is MY phrase, cite me or be literarilly disposed of) ((Get it? Literarilly? Yea...you get it)). To feel so deeply and to love so freely is a beautiful and disgusting thing. It is like riding along on a Merry-go-round and then plummeting at a 90° angle for thousands of feet, but eventually it does stop and the ride ends. You stop screaming, regain your balance and sense of gravity, the tears stop coming, profanities begin to cease, it is safe to open your eyes, and you realize that that safety bar that you have been squeezing so hard because of your fear of falling and losing yourself, was really really only there for your psychological needs. You were safe all along. That is how God works Sara. He give us what we need to get through. We are always safe within his grace. We think that that safety bar is what keeps us in place, but in the reality of things, if it wanted to, the torque from these rides we take could easily rip us from the comfort of our seats and toss us into the oblivion. It is then, when we are about to be tossed that we have to remember that God has better things in store for us and that we do not have to endure this on our own. Much like in The Fellowship of the Ring, help will crawl from eerie places, come in rough, round, rugged forms, it will be armed to the teeth, and will be drive towards the same goal, to endure, press on, and to kill a lot of gruesome orcs along the way. (I may have strayed off topic there, but we can use it as a metaphor.) Lastly, we need to stop thinking that this thing we call life is just one crazy ride. It is more like a theme park. We need time to take a step back, hop off of the ride, go gorge on some unhealthy concessions, sit back and watch the ducks walk across the pathways, and FEED THE FISH that we enjoy so much. Once we have recovered and have our bearings about us, then we can take on new challenges and hop on new rides.
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