It’s breathtaking the way grief slips up and tackles you, sometimes.

I’ll admit, I’m a slow processor. More so when life must go on, and nothing slows down, and the children’s needs must be tended. It’s easy, too easy, to put myself away and move into survival. I did that, nearly 3 years ago.

But the Spirit has been stirring and lids are getting ripped off of a variety of boxes I had packed up so neatly and stuck on the highest shelf in my heart, surely out of reach of anyone, even Him. After the initial shock of loss wore off, and the anger settled down (now I wonder, “settled where?”, and the numbness seemed to pass (has it, really? I don’t think so. If it had, why am I still so numb?), I slipped, necessarily it appeared at the time, into survival mode again. Looking back, I’m not too certain when that actually happened. I did not understand, still do not understand, and somewhere in that not understanding and kids needing to eat and bills needing paying and Neil coming into my life it all-who I was, who I am, what I felt, what I feared, everything-it had to go away to get through the days. Healing and raising children at the same time, with little help with the healing aspect and less with the children, don’t mix. I may be wrong about that, but I don’t think so.

Suddenly though, I find myself with a little me time, a window of “break”, and I feel my Lord tugging…we need to look at some things, love. I have been keeping Him at arm’s length in many ways also…thankfully, He is oh so very patient. There are a multitude of things He could choose to tug at, and there are a few He is. And you are one of them.

Our song came on the cd when I played it in the car, and Houston came back . And I am falling apart, all over again. It is a healing falling apart this time though, I think. I feel so still in my soul, waiting. I still question, did I hear Him, REALLY hear Him, about you? Was I simply a silly female, falling in ways I shouldn’t have, as we do? Yet He soothes my hair even as I write this and asks if I question everything about the last decade, all the times He led, all the ways He led….sometimes, yes. Mostly though, no. Doubt and ever present loss do make me wonder, I will not lie. A voice asks me, “If this were really Jehovah through all of this, would you still be living as you are? I thought He was to restore what was stolen, that’s what He says he does. Yet you just keep losing more. I don’t think you are actually hearing Him, I think you are hearing another lord and following that voice mistakenly”..

The lords of the past seek hard to enslave my children. Bastards have to fight the wounds they have received though for supremacy.

Though I may falter in my steps, never beyond Your reach….

No. It has not all been a lie I fell for. From that first moment You encountered me exiting my bedroom door, and asked if I wanted life to stay as it was, as so many do, and simply keep plodding until I die, or if I was willing to take Your hand and follow–but it was my choice…I have, with everything in me, tried to say I do daily. I mess up. I have missed You in things, and I have kept up with You in others. And I will continue to fumble along, chasing you like a kid down a rocky road, falling and scraping my knee at times, and waiting for You to pick me up and bring me along again. And I will never ‘be over’ you. I do not understand, I do not know what He has in mind, sometimes I do not even know if I believe or trust..but I will. And I will let the grief wash over me today, and accomplish what it needs to. I think the next week is going to be a wild ride. If you see this, you have an email.