Finding a "Healthy Whole"

"Simply being alive became holy to me." Jerry Sittser (A Grace Disguised, How the Soul Grows Through Loss).

A friend and mentor recommended this book after Heather passed away. I've been slowly working my way through it as I have felt able. It is not a topic that I look forward to digesting, but it is necessary all the same. So far his book has been full of great insights that make me pause and nod and help me put words to what I'm experiencing, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I've written before about how much more sacred the little things of life have become, just stopping to appreciate life itself. This continues to be true. I find myself lingering a little longer over my baby's crib, just enjoying watching him smile (or cry in protest of the impending nap) up at me. I snuggle my boys a little bit more when I can manage to slow them down (or slow myself down) long enough to do so. I'm truly grateful, and I mean GRATEFUL, when we have safely traveled home after a long trip.

Every day is a gift. It seems so glib and cliche to write, but it is truly how I feel. And just as Sittser explains, the everyday things of life become truly meaningful.

I'm slowly making my way through another book, the account of Jesus' life from a man who knew Him personally, the Apostle John. John's account reminds me of another truth that Sittser touches on. Chapter nineteen of John's book describes the gory and unjust murder of Jesus as John and His loved ones looked on. And Chapter 20 reveals the astonishing joy they then subsequently experienced upon His Resurrection. What strikes me is that those who rejoiced in chapter 20 could have never experienced that same joy had they not endured the agony of chapter 19.

Sittser describes how our sorrows give birth to greater joys when he writes, "The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering...once enlarged, the soul is also capable of experiencing greater joy, strength, peace, and love." (p.54) He also explains the sad irony that those who we would want to share our growth from these devastations with the most are the ones that we lost.

Even as I write this I'm afraid that it will sound like in some sick sort of way I'm benefiting from Heather's death or that I'm experiencing joy out of it. Far from it. I still HATE HATE HATE that she died. I still want to wake up and have it all be a bad dream. I still want to call her on the phone for one of our monthly hour long chats and catch up on all that we can before our kids totally lose it in the background. But since I can't go back to those days I have to somehow move forward. And as I move forward I'm finding that my soul which is raw from her loss is now so much more sensitive to the joys of life as well.

Sittser describes how he has moved forward after the loss of his wife, mother and young daughter to a drunk driver, "Loss requires that we live in a delicate tension. We must mourn, but we must go on living...The sorrow I feel has not disappeared but it has integrated into my life as a painful part of a healthy whole." (p.57).

I'm trying to find that "healthy whole" one day at a time. And I'm so grateful to have the gift of friends who knew and loved Heather, and those who didn't, to process through this unwanted, unexpected, but nonetheless soul changing loss with.