My great-grandmother died a few days ago. I was very close to her. When I went to visit my dad every summer I stayed at her house and she cooked my sister and I meals served with the best sweet tea in the South. She took us to the library a few times a week and grew my love for books, and she sat in her rocking chair and told us stories of the war and her best friend and what it was like to be a young woman admist a hard time for our country.
She taught me what it looked like to be a strong woman who stands for what she believes in. She was a writer, a poet and a letter-writer. She valued her family and I was so blessed to be so close to her.
It was hard to lose her. It is hard. Especially when I know I will not see my family for another 8 months. I think it is important that you get to follow every bit of my journey with me, so I have decided to share a section out of my diary two days after she passed.
My Prayer/Journal entry:
“Lord I don’t know what to do with this pain. I want to allow myself to experience this. To let You comfort me in my breaking. To allow You to let me grow. It is so hard. I always stuffed my pain for a reason. It is so much easier to tuck it away and ignore it. Feeling this….taking it in…I feel so broken.
I am reminded of when you first saw Mary weeping over Lazarus in John 11. You Wept. Jesus wept. Here I am experiencing death myself for the first time and I wonder if You, Jesus God of the Universe wept at death, how can I survive it? It is crazy to feel so much pain over something I should have peace about. It was Gigi’s time. I am so glad she is finally at rest until she meets you face to face and is wrapped in your love, but God…Jesus…Holy Spirit? It hurts. How do people survive this without you? How do they move on with life ,because here I am wondering how to continue serving and doing what I was called here to do when I have this pain in me. I have a lot of pain in me.
I have stuffed it down. I learned long ago I couldn’t survive that way. That it is better to ride it out and use it for Your glory, whatever that looks like. But sometimes it pops up and I realize maybe I never fully let it all go. Maybe I never fully let go all the pain from losing past relationships that in the moment sometimes felt worse then death. Pain from feeling unloved. Heartbreak from taking on more pain of the world then is mine to bear.
But I know you are making me better. I can trust if I let myself weep as You did that day Your friend died that I can make it too. That this grief and pain will bring me a step closer to your heart, and a bit closer to understanding someone else’s pain. Just maybe.”
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