Photo by Norma Sessions

I’ve known it intellectually, but now I’m living the reality.

Grieving means living with paradoxes, struggling with conflicting emotions and desires! 

I’m less than a month away from Linda’s death. The grief is raw, the sense of loss intense.  Here are some of my lived paradoxes:

• relief that she’s at peace and regret that she is gone;
• desire to engage others and preference for being alone;
• wanting to remember and trying to forget;
• confidence that I loved her well and guilt that I fell short;
• quietness as solace and silence as a void;
• aloneness as solitude and aloneness as loneliness;
• clinging to God’s presence while feeling God’s absence.

A friend reminded me, “You can’t go around grief. You have to go through it!” I can’t remove the paradoxes. I just have to live them.

God, grant me the patience necessary for living with and through grief’s paradoxes!