A Holy Sorrow

This past week has been a whirlwind of emotion for me.  Actually more like a hurricane.  Often great joy is followed by great sorrow these days.  I think the full force of grief is finally here and it is exhausting.  My birthday, a joyous occasion with great family and friends, found me sobbing on the bed at the absence of one.  The excitement of seeing our dream house and meeting this delightful woman was very bittersweet.  Tom does not get to share in this joy and died never crossing this off of his bucket list.  Yesterday I happened upon a picture of us on our first Christmas after we were married.  I was sitting on his lap and we looked blissfully happy.  So much life ahead of us.  So much to look forward to and experience together.  I spent the evening sobbing, wishing I could turn back time.  Wishing my children were all children and we were all at the dinner table together.  This grief knocks you off your feet some days.  I have a wonderful worship CD by Brian Johnson from Bethel.  This CD sang Tom home and now it is ruined for me.  Every song takes me back to those last few days and the grief is just too much.  BTW, if any of you ever meet Brian would you tell him that he sang my husband home and for that I am eternally grateful.  I have Tom's shirt sealed in a ziploc bag and I open it regularly and just inhale the smell of him.  I let the kids each small it and they all said it smells like dad.  I dread the day when I can no longer smell him.
     There are things about this journey that just make me mad.  It really makes me mad that where he is he can't miss me.  I want him to miss me.  It makes me mad that I must give up the person I cherished the most in this world. It makes me mad that there is no marriage in heaven, (a thought I rejoiced in many a time).  It makes me mad that we won't be Opa and Oma's house, just Oma's.  It makes me mad that he left me a very messy workbench to clean up.  Lot's of mad, all grief, some joy, little vision.  I wonder a lot why it has to be this way?  What is the reason or purpose of such pain and such definitive loss?  I have no answers and that makes me mad too.  The only conclusion that I have drawn is that I have a deep desire to be there.  To finally be home.  It gives me a hunger for eternity that I never had before when my life was so here.  I long for my real home.  To see Tom and to be with my grandma.  This is not my home and I don't yet understand why I must stay here or what my purpose here is but I return to the fact that God is not done writing my story.  So, I will wait patiently, or not so, for the next chapter.  I will feel!  That is a challenge sometimes because feeling right now is usually not good.  I think when you have experienced this kind of sorrow it sits on your shoulder to some degree until the grave and I must somehow learn to live with it.  It is a holy sorrow.  A holy thing to have loved someone so much and be loved in return.  For you who are suffering, God is not done writing your story.  Look for it.  Anticipate it and know that somehow it will be better than we can imagine but sorrow will forever be part of that story and we can do this.  He WILL do this.