If you’ve been following my journey from the beginning, you probably remember that one of my good friends committed suicide six days before I left for training camp. It made me not want to go on the World Race anymore, but God insisted that now was still my time. (the whole story)
A couple months ago I wrote about how I was sick of grieving and didn’t understand how I wasn’t over it yet. (that whole story)
Then today I opened my journal and wrote “Sunday, November 30th(Day 150).” I smiled because 150 is a big and exciting number and a really long time to be away from home. Then I paused and tried to think how many days it had been since Daniel died.
I had no idea. I had to flip through my journals and count. I used to wake up every morning and know the number of days and hours. After a while I only counted the days, then slowly I got to only remembering on big markers like the 100th and 150th…and seeing as today is the 201st day, apparently I don’t even remember the major days anymore.
And instead of guilty or sad, I felt free.
I wrote,
Today makes 201 days. The fact that the 200th passed without my noticing is kind of sad but mostly beautiful. God has been healing me and I didn’t even realize it.
Daniel’s death changed my life, but it doesn’t define my life anymore. I’m sure it’ll still affect me from time to time, and I’ll always be sad about it, but all of that is okay now. I’m not weak or different from anyone else for grieving, and when I’m reminded that the process still isn’t over(because I’ll have plenty of days where I feel like I’m done, but I’ll probably come into un-okay days for years still), I’ll just let it be. I won’t fight it or hide it or try to go it alone anymore.
On May 11th it felt like the world stopped. I’ve had plenty of hard things happen before, but this time I really truly thought I’d never be okay again. Not that day, not ever. And I was so annoyed when people would tell me that life goes on. But it has. It took almost seven months(wow), but it finally has.
Thanks God.
So, for the first four months I was curled in a ball on the metaphorical floor. While this last month was pretty great, I think I was just sitting up on the floor instead of lying on it. Now going into month 6, I’m dusting myself off and getting up to dance.
Get ready, Malaysia…
