Counting My Blessings 2016

2015 is in the books.

Good Riddance 2015

 I, for one, am glad to see the end of that year, a year that, in my family, we refer to as the First Worst Year. On January 4, 2015, Shane was killed in a car accident. I lost my husband, our—my--children lost their father and our world was turned upside down.

Grief is a long and arduous journey. In the First Worst Year you must somehow travel past all the holiday hazards and private milestones of your former life: Birthdays, anniversaries, the memory of a first kiss, Ground Hog’s Day, Flag Day---every day seems loaded with pain and memory. Breathing is difficult, the days interminable, the nights impossible.

Yet, somehow---time goes by. The days pass. People surround you with love and prayers and acts of service and you are somehow carried through. A month goes by, then two, more milestones pass. Eventually, there are some days when the grief seems “manageable,” and so you “manage” it. There are other days when the act of breathing seems more than you can manage and grief threatens to drown you.

Jordan, Cameron, Sue, & Devin

But you don’t actually drown. The bittersweet beauty of Life is that it continues. The sun rises. Flowers bloom. Babies are born. Joy comes in the morning. The waves of grief have both ebb and flow.

In this year of Worst Firsts, my family has had some pretty wonderful first as well. Falling in love, a college graduation, an engagement, new jobs, travel. We have had a multitude of blessings. Even in that very First of Worst Days, there was so much love shown to us. Love, lighting up the darkness and leading us through.

Do I think that grief is somehow “resolved” now that the Worst First is passed? I wish it were that simple. But I do believe that the small Light that shown in the darkness of those first days continues to grow...