I Am Stronger Because of All I've Been Through
[image deleted]At one point in our lives, we all experience what they call the "valleys" we have to climb. I didn't know these valleys to climb are real, until I lost a loved one, finding myself in the dark. Oh yes, so so dark.
After R, I felt as small and vulnerable as I did at six-years old, but with the grown-up reality that there actually is a valley of the shadow of death. In that valley, I went through smaller valleys: the valley of change, the valley of disbelief,the valley of unknowns, the valley of anger, the valley of reality.
I was a stranger in this valley of change, too grieved to be fearful, too shattered to believe I would ever escape this unknown land and find wholeness again.
Grief changes us. Even when we are not conscious of the changes being made, grief's slow stain begins and continues to color our lives along the journey. The change is largely imperceptible until one day you are no longer the same. You are different, eternally different for better or worse.
Every page of your life becomes bookmarked with a "before" and "after" loss. It is only walking through the valley that we are prepared, one step at a time, for the great mile of the journey.
Because grief has a work to do. We cannot medicate it away, sleep it away, shop it away, or busy ourselves enough to dilute our pain. Grief demands to be experienced through solitary process of change. Life goes on around us, and yet we're thrown off the well-beaten path we once walked. A new path lies before us, beckoning us forward into more unknowns.
[image deleted]No one told me that grief felt so much like fear. I wasn't afraid, but the sensation was like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness. At other times, it felt like being mildly drunk or concussed. There was a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me.
Through sorrow and conflict, I came to know God as my only source of strength and hope. Waves and billows had gone over me, and floods of sorrow poured upon me, yet day by day the Lord also poured out His steadfast love upon me. I felt the impact of suffering, yet also experienced His relentless love.
Certainly my life had changed. I would never be the same again. I had no choice but to believe He would hear my desperate prayers, help me take one more step, and give me enough strength to face one more day.
After R, I felt as small and vulnerable as I did at six-years old, but with the grown-up reality that there actually is a valley of the shadow of death. In that valley, I went through smaller valleys: the valley of change, the valley of disbelief,the valley of unknowns, the valley of anger, the valley of reality.
I was a stranger in this valley of change, too grieved to be fearful, too shattered to believe I would ever escape this unknown land and find wholeness again.
Grief changes us. Even when we are not conscious of the changes being made, grief's slow stain begins and continues to color our lives along the journey. The change is largely imperceptible until one day you are no longer the same. You are different, eternally different for better or worse.
Every page of your life becomes bookmarked with a "before" and "after" loss. It is only walking through the valley that we are prepared, one step at a time, for the great mile of the journey.
Because grief has a work to do. We cannot medicate it away, sleep it away, shop it away, or busy ourselves enough to dilute our pain. Grief demands to be experienced through solitary process of change. Life goes on around us, and yet we're thrown off the well-beaten path we once walked. A new path lies before us, beckoning us forward into more unknowns.
[image deleted]No one told me that grief felt so much like fear. I wasn't afraid, but the sensation was like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness. At other times, it felt like being mildly drunk or concussed. There was a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me.
Through sorrow and conflict, I came to know God as my only source of strength and hope. Waves and billows had gone over me, and floods of sorrow poured upon me, yet day by day the Lord also poured out His steadfast love upon me. I felt the impact of suffering, yet also experienced His relentless love.
Certainly my life had changed. I would never be the same again. I had no choice but to believe He would hear my desperate prayers, help me take one more step, and give me enough strength to face one more day.
