First published Dec 9 2020
I started writing this blog the day my daughter died.
Does that make me sound like a freak? My daughter died, so I started a blog.
Well, there is thought behind it.
I am a writer.
It's what I do.
It's how I process the world around me.
And it's therapeutic.
And I needed an outlet to somehow digest the fact that my 19-year-old daughter - who had just been planning to move in with a friend, who had just gotten a new job, who was selling her artwork on consignment, who loved being a mama to her bearded dragon, and who was crazy in love with her boyfriend - was now dead.
Unexpected doesn't even begin to describe the impact.
Blindsided, maybe?
Ambushed?
Sucker-punched comes close maybe, because every day since, I've had a painful chunk of nothing residing in my gut where more than the wind has been knocked out of me.
I literally started writing about her death the day she died. By the grace of God, I knew that He was with us and that He was going to carry us through in miraculous ways, and I wanted to remember.
Don't get me wrong, I was, and still am, brokenhearted that my sweet girl is gone. But having faced suffering before, and having wrestled with God about accepting his plan and trusting him when life repeatedly handed me sorrow after sorrow, challenge after challenge, I had the presence of mind to know that even though I was facing probably the worst pain in my life, I was going to survive, and only by the grace of God.
Maybe it was time to become a prophet of sorts. To somehow share with the world that suffering wasn't going to kill me. In fact, God's unexpected and clear message in my daughter's death was that the pain and sorrow of this life would refine me and draw me closer to him, closer to heaven, and closer to my daughter.
And to do that, I was going to have to wholeheartedly accept whatever he allowed to transpire in my life.
I was going to have to lean in.
Lean in to him even in my confusion and pain.
Lean in to him for strength because I couldn't even hold myself up.
Lean in to the suffering that any sane person would want to run from.
Please follow me on my blog and share your comments with me.
More to follow soon. 💗
Comments