"Hold My Hand, and walk joyously with Me through this day. Together we will savor the pleasures & endure the difficulties it brings...I am your Guide, as well as your constant Companion. I know every step of the journey ahead of you, all the way to heaven..." ~ Jesus Calling
The services have passed, a wonderful, wonderful 4 days spent with THE best of the best! Friends & family from close by or who have traveled from afar have meant more to me than words could ever try to express. So many times you all heard me comment on my thankfulness that my mother had some special friends, many of whom are & have always been "second moms" to me & my brother for as long as I can remember! Moms friends, those who love her so & all consider her one of their "best friends" never cease to amaze me! I stay incredibly overwhelmed, as I have pretty much from the beginning, by the incredible outpouring of love & devotion to my mother AND ME! To our whole family! Wow! Your healing hands, messages, cards & letters offer me continued comfort far more than you will ever know! Seeing the mail man makes things brighten a bit for me as his record, so stellar these past 3 months, offers me "hugs" nestled deep in that mailbag of paper! You all have really spoiled me! Your words, endless encouragement that are so desperately needed, will be needed for a long time to come...words my mother would have offered when tending to my ever so painful wounds...her incredible ability to offer healing with those beautiful glass blue eyes, warm smile & gentle way of offering advice that I may or may not want to hear at the time...it really didn't matter, I could feel her loving me & that was all that would really matter...
I would have paid good money for it Monday...everyday really! I have been anticipating the "setting in" that was inevitably making its way closer & closer...the time when denial packed up its bags & went on its way but not before leaving a pathway, preparing a guest room for its buddy REALITY to push right through our front door, dropping all it's luggage right there in the living room floor & exclaiming "wahoo, I'm Heeere!!! Let's get this show on the road!"
"Today is one of those days when I wish I was a little girl & could climb into my mother's lap & cry until the hurt goes away"
Blanton, Julie & Collier were set to leave that afternoon, a time I had been dreading with everything I had in me, ok well since the day Julie arrived 2 weeks ago! I have this bad habit of "stealing trouble from tomorrow" so I pretty much had a pit in my stomach every time the thought of her leaving day crossed my brain. I really, really need to kick that habit & focus on enjoying each moment while I'm in it but how can you when you have SO many people in your life that make you feel...
"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard" ~ Winnie the Pooh
We offered tears & waves on the driveway, Blair begging for them not to go... Mom always makes things feel better if she were here...she would have stollen the "yuck" from earlier in the day at the bank, the awfulness that was filling spaces in my heart while working on accounts, making arrangements & tending to the "must take care of's" that we're weighing me down...In the world I prefer I could just call & her voice would stop the "crazy" of emotions from various tasks that we're making your world spin out of control. REALITY! The reality was, she can no longer offer that to me here on earth. There is no calling mom on the phone to fix things or talk them out, there is no reaching out to hold HER hand or offer a hug on HER otherwise "yuck" kind of day...thankfully she no longer has "yuck" days but I sure do! For now, day after day! How can this be that one of my "first responders" (the people on ur list u go to first in need - just so u know this in no way discounts my husband! It's a different deal!) one of the people that make all the spinning stop, is the person making all the spinning happen! Yikes!! That's not a senerio we went over! Now, I am aware of how this whole process goes, " it'll get better", I'll make it with all the tools she instilled in me & such loving bodies that reside around me, "it takes time"...I'll be ok? Eventually...! But guess what? I still don't want to do this! I'll never want to & I don't want to wait to see her again! All things I know God is SO accustomed to hearing!
It reminds me of 6 years ago when we had to re-home my dogs before Brooke was born, as many of you know, it was down right HORRIBLE & devastating! Awful! The boys were everything to me! They had lived through many a breeding seasons by my side & never failed me...Mom loved those dogs just the same, knitted them Christmas stalkings that I still have (Thanks Katie Haag!)...it was a bad deal but we had no choice, we had to let them go. In my grief Chris offered something I myself would have said, "I know it's hard now but I promise it will get better in time & won't hurt quite as much, doesn't help now but it it will get better...it also doesn't change how much you love them" My pain & hurt over losing them has never gotten better since that day on the curb! I may handle it better but it still hurts the same & REALITY tells me this is a way bigger beast than any I have ever battled in my entire life! Reality tells me that this pain & loss will never get better in time...but
by the Grace & Mercy of a Lord so much bigger than anything any of us can fathom, I will simply just handle it differently.
I am pretty sure the other members of this dreadful new club I am now in feel the same, how could anyone possibly understand, especially with a relationship like ours? Yes others feel loss just as I have but has anyone known or experienced a relationship as such me & my mother? I pray with everything God has given me, that my girls will quickly respond "YES!!" One day - soon! The fact is, Jesus himself suffered the ultimate, He alone knows far more about this than any of us, as did Mary there at the foot of the cross. I cannot fathom her anguish watching her son hang there from those nails. For you. For me. For mom & so many others so that we might have life everlasting...so that we could cross each other's paths, be blessed SO by one another, so that we could over flow a church by 400 people, so that we could love SO deeply that the hurt from loss makes us physically sick...so that one day when all the pain & despair that floods thru right at this moment will one day all seem like nothing as I wrap my arms around moms neck ...
“Thus might I hide my blushing face while His dear cross appears — dissolve my heart in thankfulness, and melt mine eyes to tears…."
My pain & suffering pale in comparison to the suffering & torture He endured to give us life, He died so that we may have life. I am reminded deeply that I must pick up my cross EVERY single day without fail, its vital! Even on days such as these when it simply feels too overwhelming, too heavy...but His promise will carry me...
Luke 9:23 – And he said to [them] all, If any [man] will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
That while I hurt in a way I cannot describe, it is even more reason that the details of His death must linger constantly in my mind, at all times for without His sacrifice, we would be nothing. I often share snip it's from Ann Voscamp & a few other blogs, including my own...I love this statement from Ann Voscamps blog:
"Take your broken heart, your shattered heart, and give thanks for the heart of God who bleeds with yours and this is how your broken, dis-membered heart is re-membered – when you remember to count the ways He loves. Count, like you’re taking your own pulse, like you’re determined to keep breathing...give thanks for Him in the midst of an almost hell, and your dis-membered heart re-members.."......For you. For all your regrets and for all your impossibles, for all that will never be and for all that once was, for all that you can’t make right and for all that you got wrong, for your Judas failures and your Peter denials and your Lazarus griefs, I offer to take the nails, the sharp edge of everything, and offer you myself because I want you, to take you, you in your wild grief, you in your anger and your disappointment and your wounds and your not-yet-there, you, just as you are, not some improved version of you, but you – I came for you, to hold you, to carry you, to save you.”
...and so, with my teary face toward Jesus I thank Him for mom and for life everlasting...with her...with Chris & the girls...with so many others I hold so dear...
...for if He hadn't loved us so much despite all our shortcomings, we wouldn't be so fortunate to meet again...
Thank you all for continuing to follow me!
With so much love!
Sarah
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