I am going through a very dark time in my life right now. I found out on Tuesday that not only does my baby girl have leukemia, but a childhood friend, my maid of honor at my wedding, also has leukemia. Although my friend and I are not incredibly close, since we live about 1,500 miles apart and we have very different lives, this news still devestates me. My friend is the only person that I remain in contact with from our high school. I had friends in high school that I used to hang out with more, but none who have been as faithful as this friend. She has always searched me out when I have fallen off the face of the earth and she has always been more than willing to just pick up where we left off.
To learn that this friend has leukemia has just brought a new level of grief into my life. I was already grieving and didn’t really want to experience any more grief, thank you very much, but I suppose that God has other plans for me. Right now, I would like to tell God that his plans don’t seem so good and I would like for him to create a different plan for me, IMMEDIATELY, but that doesn’t really seem like a wise thing to do, seeing as how, well, He’s God and, well, I’m not. So that leaves me with only one choice (is it a choice if there is only one option? I’m not sure that it is): go through the grief.
How exactly do you get through grief? I am not claiming to have the answer, but I do have some ways of coping with my grief that I’d like to share and if there are any readers out there (besides me – yes, I read my own blog, sometimes I enlighten myself) I would love to hear about other ways to cope with grief.
Here’s what I have done so far:
1. Journaling: I bought a beautiful journal with scripture or inspiring comments on each page shortly after my baby girl was diagnosed with leukemia. Since then I have tried to write in my journal as often as possible. I like to write about the cute things that my baby girl does and how I am feeling about losing her. It hurts sometimes to go back and read about how, just a few weeks ago, she still had enough energy to play with her brother, but I am glad that I am recording the memories so that at some point, when the pain is not as sharp, I can use my journal to remind me of the snatches of happiness that came even in such a dark time.
2. Praying: There is no better listener than God. I would say that He never interrupts me, but that’s not always true. Sometimes He does. But when He does, it is always to speak to me about the most amazing things. Sometimes it is about things that I already know, but need to be reminded of, sometimes it is something entirely new, but it is always about Him reminding me of who He is and that He is there and is listening and He does have a purpose for everything.
3. Exercising: I love to run, so for me, running enables me to do something I enjoy AND get all the benefits of exercise as well: elevated mood (which for now is still pretty low, but I’ll take any improvement I can get), increased immune function (which is a real need when you are under stress or are grieving since your immune system takes a real hit), and better sleep (depression can interfere with sleep and there have been several nights when I have woken up and started crying over my baby girl, but I am still getting better quality sleep than if I had not exercised at all) just to name a few. It’s also a great distraction for me, since when I run on the treadmill, I put on my headphones and concentrate on the music.
4. Talking: Right now, my husband and my friends are my therapists. I have to tell you, I really do have some of the most wonderful friends and I know I have the absolute BEST husband in the universe. They have all listened to me, oh so very patiently, as I have talked about all the yuckiness that I am going through right now. My church home group basically just let me rant and rave for our entire meeting the week before last. It was the best thing they could have done for me. They literally were the arms of Jesus wrapping me in a giant hug that night and their kindness was a tangible reminder that no matter how bad my circumstances are, God loves me. My circumstances are not an indicator of God’s love, but the care and concern for me by those He has placed in my life are.
5. Crying: I have been crying and crying and crying. At home, at work, in the car. In the middle of the night. In the morning. I feel like a complete goob, but two friends reminded me of something that I had told someone else before: it is OK to grieve. I am human. I have feelings. It is not wrong to express those feelings. Crying is how I am expressing those feelings. I need to give myself permission to experience those feelings and not expect to go through a painful season in life stuffing all those feelings until they come out in some other, very unhealthy way. It gave me a real sense of freedom to allow myself to grieve. Yes, I would prefer not to be walking around at work with tears streaming down my cheeks, but I am no longer caught in the vicious cycle of being upset because my baby girl is dying, then being upset because I am upset, then becoming more upset, etc., etc., etc.
6. Hoping: I do not mean hoping in the sense of denial, although I do, at times, find myself going there. I do mean looking forward and realizing that there is HOPE. Maybe not for my baby girl to be healed (maybe so, but I am not in control of that), but there is hope that one day I will be out of this valley. I have not even experienced the worst of it, I am sure, but it will not last forever. One day, I will realize that even though there may still be pain, there is also once again the opportunity for joy. I will have to make a choice to either stay where there is more pain, or move toward the joy. I suspect that it will always hurt when I think about the loss of my baby girl, but I also suspect that I can choose to think of the wonderful things she brought with her when she became part of our family and that someday, it will be easier to make that choice. This is not a power of positive thinking strategy. I am not a big believer in that philosophy. I do believe, though, in moving forward and experiencing healing. I have said several times that God promises us that He will heal our broken hearts and I believe that, but I do have to accept His healing and when He leads me through the valley of the shadow of death (notice that the scripture does not say that He leads me into the valley and leaves me there, nor does it say that He leads me around of the valley of the shadow of death - He leads me through it, from beginning to end) I need to follow Him. I do not believe that it is God’s will for me to be stuck in the valley. He will lead me, but that implies that I have to follow Him in order to get through it.
So there they are. Six of the ways that I am currently coping with grief. I wish I could say that I am being a super-trooper and am not asking God to explain why this is happening or to make it all go away, but I am trying to remember that 33 years ago, I told God that I wanted Him to be my leader and even though there have been many, many, many times when I have gone back on my promise to follow Him, He never has gone back on His promise to me that He will lead me. So I am following Him, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes whining and complaining, but always grateful when He stops so I can catch up or when He meets me where I have fallen and waits for me to follow Him once again.
