I've attempted to write several times since my last entry. Those attempts ended with the delete button. It is not that I do not have anything I want to say. It is that the "holiday season" has made it impossible for me to find something in my heart to say that is appropriate for this space.
"Grief professionals" warn us that this time of year is difficult for those of us in this club. The friends I've talked with in the club told me to be prepared for a tough time, to have a plan, to brace myself. These warnings, while accurate in their aim, were like shooting a bb gun when a howitzer was needed.
I am, quite honestly, still struggling to recover some sense of stability, direction and strength. My intention is not to describe the depth nor the intensity to which the holidays drove my grief. I have no description that would make sense to anyone other than those in this club. You would just worry that I've lost my mind...and perhaps I have...but more accurately, I've lost a piece of my heart....the part of it that was filled with Bonnie.
Do you remember my mentioning Bonnie's Christmas present to me from last year? The one that had been sitting unread on my desk for a year? The daily devotional that appeared to fit my hands and my heart? I was so disoriented on January 1 that I forgot to read it. Then, today I determined that I should begin. I am so very glad I did.
I NEED to get back into the Word. This little book...Bonnie's Christmas present to me...is helping me to realize a tiny sense of stability. Perhaps, "The Word" is how this ship of mine can be righted. Bonnie is still at work in my life, isn't she? Her work continues. His work continues through her.
As I read January 1 and then January 2 just to catch up, I couldn't stop. I read January 3 and 4. I needed each message and I can't help but wonder if that will continue throughout the year.
As my grief continues; as my pain lives on; as my loneliness even increases and the hole in my heart does not heal, I find myself asking God for more proof. Proof not that He exists, for He has proven that to me. But proof that Bonnie is there with Him; that the smile she gave me when she left was an assurance that she was going where she had worked all of her life to go; for proof that I will also be there with her someday.
I guess I'm just someone who finds belief difficult without proof. The world has a way of doing that to us, doesn't it? The trust of a child gets beaten away. But yet, we are called to trust as a child...completely and unconditionally.
I am wrong to ask for more proof. I know that in my brain. It is my heart that is so wounded.
I am thinking on that smile Bonnie gave me as she left me. Why 'on earth' would she have done so? Why, other than as an assurance of what she saw and where she was going, would she have done so? Why is that not enough proof for me?
I'm thinking on that this morning. I am praying for my heart to accept that gift from her, from Him, as all the proof necessary to know she is well and that I am going to be with her also....and so are you....if we believe and follow Him. What a gift.
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