If I'm Honest...
Ok, so if I’m honest I’ve had a few pity parties this past
weekend.
The social distancing that you are all experiencing right
now with this current situation is somewhat similar to the social distancing
that typically happens for widows. Ok,
so I won’t speak for all widows because maybe some have different experiences,
but, this is mine.
For example you might find that when you meet people now,
there is some avoidance, because it’s awkward, there’s avoidance because we don’t
know what to say and there is fear. All
those things I have experienced these past two years. Friends have stepped up, some friends have
dropped away, new friends have been made.
It’s like high school all over again - lol!
Social distancing means that in their unease people might say
silly things that they might not normally say.
There’s judgment and sometimes weird comments if you are out and about. Weekends are long and excruciatingly quiet;
you can’t simply go out and do what you want.
A lot of the elements of this current situation run pretty parallel to my life.
But, there is a difference.
Over these past two years I was
pushing myself to live again, to pull free of the fear of living on my own, to
feel brave enough to ask people for help or even to ask them to go for coffee. I was learning to go out on my own, to go to
a restaurant by myself, to go to the movies and be ok with reserving one
seat.
You might be wondering what life look like once we all come
squinting out of our homes and seeing the world again for the first time in
months. What will it be like to have a
schedule that includes actual real life people and not just their images on a screen?
So, after I had a really good cry Sunday morning I decided that
if I could learn to live after the greatest pain I’ve ever experienced of losing
my husband, my best friend, I could decide to live in this eerily quiet
world. So, I cranked up some upbeat
worship music and filled this home with songs of praise.
Right now some of my favorite music is from a group called We The
Kingdom. This song is one of my favorites that they do, but there is another one they perform called Holy Water which is one that you can't sit still for!
The first thing I decided to do was to finish working on my old filing cabinet that I had painted. I took a before and after picture and what you don’t see in the before picture was that Wes had 3 different kinds of handles on that cabinet. He always figured that for in the office that was good enough. The bottom drawer was broken so I fixed that with some Gorilla glue – the greatest invention in glue EVER! Then I got out my handy dandy Dewalt drill and put some legs on that baby, touched up some spots that I had messed up on and proudly put it back into the office. Now it looks like a piece of furniture! The color is just ok, but for picking it up as mis-tinted paint from the clearance table I think I did pretty good!
After I was done with my file cabinet I got my journals
out. Last year I purchased a journal for
each of my children and grandchildren. Through
the year I wrote down funny things that happened, sometimes sad things that
happened, like Blaique breaking her arm and through words tried to let them
know how I felt for them in those moments.
It has been an opportunity to put in writing how much I love and
appreciate my children’s support on my journey to finding my way again. I try to write something very specific and
special about each of them and then at Christmas each grandchild comes to sit
on my lap and I read what I wrote to them.
Kind of like a love letter. My
children didn’t have to sit on my lap – lol, I allowed them to read their
journals on their own. But, I’ve found this
to be a very special time for me with each grandchild and there were even some
things that I had written that I had forgotten about myself. This will now become our new Christmas
tradition. And so I spent the afternoon
pouring out my love for them in their journals and let’s just say I’m glad I
didn’t have 10 kids!!
One other thing that I decided to do on Sunday to pull myself out of this funk was to record myself reading a bedtime story to my grandkids. Yes, I put my PJ’s on and read through the book God’s Amazing World. I posted it on my youtube channel with a link that I shared with Mark and Tina so that whenever Tina decided to put the kids to bed, this could be their story time and a way for Mama to stay connected. I’ll again be honest and say that I am very self-conscious about how I look on video; well I’m self-conscious about how I look at any time, but to put myself in a video made me really uncomfortable but then I reminded myself that the grandkids don’t see the imperfections that I see, all they see is Mama. So, I went ahead and recorded it and Tina said the kids had loved it. They had sat quietly on the couch the whole time, the video was almost 9 minutes long, so that’s a long time for 4 kids to sit still! And little Brooklyn had kept saying, “That’s Mama!” So, today I will record a few more stories so they have something new to look forward to as the days roll on. The other day I watched a dance video of my grandson and granddaughter dancing and so my mind is rolling with ideas to have a dance party with Grandma…that will definitely NEVER go public - lol
You might wonder, is any of this going to get easier? No one can give that kind of a promise. But going through these past two years if
there is one thing I have learned is that living a life that’s easy isn’t really
the answer. Adapting and learning to
live outside of what you might think of as the norm is really how your going to
survive now. And you have to keep reminding
yourself that you CAN survive this. Will
you be a different person coming out of this?
Probably, maybe in little ways and it could be in some big ways. But, I have found for myself that God’s voice
has gotten louder and a fair bit clearer or maybe it’s just that I’ve also
learned to listen to him differently.
Like the smog disappearing over large cities, my mind seems to be clearing
and I look up to Heaven a lot more, like I did when I first realized that I was
really alone. Does that mean my grief is
gone and that I don’t fear for the future?
Absolutely not! God has seen me
more often than not melt into a puddle of tears this past weekend and many
times before that. I miss my husband and
my previous life more than I can even explain to you and it’s been hard going
through this without Wes; I miss his calming presence, his humor and his
protection, I still often hear his voice during those times in our life when he would
remind me, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be ok!”
or when he knew I really needed encouragement he’d say, “You can do
this! You know you can!” And as I
remember him saying these words to me I imagine him looking at Jesus standing
beside him and with that sweet little smirk of his (Wes not Jesus) and a quick
wink he’d remind me, “Dinah, you got this!”
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you' and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. Isaiah 43:2
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