Practicing Courage to Walk Into the Future
As I sit here almost 10 months since Sam died, it feels like just last week......and yet it feels like I've been alone for years. Memories are vivid...and yet they fade. I have a hard time remembering what our days were like together..and yet I don't. Life is confusing. Trying to make sense of it is impossible. Nothing makes sense.
What is worthwhile thinking about is the daily transformation each of us makes toward our future. Today formed tomorrow. The strength I gained today will hold me up tomorrow. The courage I mustered up to do the hard things today will come back tomorrow. Practicing courage enlarges courage; practicing faith and reliance on God's plan for me helps grow my faith.
My short-term goals are still being formed. Today my lawyer sent me the final papers to dissolve our chiropractic corporation. I initially felt tears welling up and my throat tightening, but it seemed to pass, and I honestly just felt numb. I signed the papers and asked my wonderful friend who signed on as Director of our company to help me, to sign his portion of the papers, and with a couple of signatures and an online filing, that is it. Everything is gone. Our Notary corporation was dissolved a couple of months ago and now....nothing is left to "dissolve." Can life be that final -- how can something you poured your heart into for 35 years suddenly cease to exist with a tiny bit of ink on a paper. I suppose not being able to acknowledge the depth of my losses tonight is good. Am I completely feeling-less? am I becoming cold and uncaring? It puzzles me that I'm not weeping and stomping around that the one man I lived for and loved was taken by an unfair and brutal cancer, and the businesses we built together were yanked away with the stroke of a pen.
Maybe the courage I've been practicing is taking hold; maybe my faith is being enlarged in ways that allow me to cope with the daily events that life throws at me. I feel less paralyzed and more surrendered to the process of being changed. Over the past few weeks I've been praying and thinking about what the future holds for me. Out of that reflection came an enormous decision: At the end of the summer, I will stop working and spend more time processing exactly what happened last year; to rest and become stronger to face what lies ahead for me. With my house for sale, I'll start over in a new location, make new friends, find a new church, maybe a new job. I'll wake up each morning and have coffee on the patio; welcome friends to come stay with me; go to wineries; maybe buy a convertible and take a drive by the lake. I'll rest more and work less. I'll find new places to explore, take a trip, babysit my grandbabes, spend more time encouraging and blessing others, leave my critical self in the dust, inject love and time into others. By investing in my own physical and emotional healing, I will once again feel I have something to give away.
This is a year of firsts -- learning to live alone is challenging and although I don't recommend it, it is something I have been thrust into and I embrace all that comes with it. I will practice courage....daily and embrace all the good things life will bring as I face the future.
In his book Heaven, Randy Alcorn talks about what heaven will be like: "Seeing God will be like seeing everything else for the first time. We will discover that seeing God is our greatest joy, and life itself. Beholding and knowing God, we will see ourselves, and all other people and events, through God's eyes." I pray for eyes that see people as God sees them: with love and grace.
Thank you to everyone who has walked alongside me on this grief journey, thank you for reading my innermost feelings with tenderness and reverence, and thank you for understanding I am fragile and weak.
What is worthwhile thinking about is the daily transformation each of us makes toward our future. Today formed tomorrow. The strength I gained today will hold me up tomorrow. The courage I mustered up to do the hard things today will come back tomorrow. Practicing courage enlarges courage; practicing faith and reliance on God's plan for me helps grow my faith.
My short-term goals are still being formed. Today my lawyer sent me the final papers to dissolve our chiropractic corporation. I initially felt tears welling up and my throat tightening, but it seemed to pass, and I honestly just felt numb. I signed the papers and asked my wonderful friend who signed on as Director of our company to help me, to sign his portion of the papers, and with a couple of signatures and an online filing, that is it. Everything is gone. Our Notary corporation was dissolved a couple of months ago and now....nothing is left to "dissolve." Can life be that final -- how can something you poured your heart into for 35 years suddenly cease to exist with a tiny bit of ink on a paper. I suppose not being able to acknowledge the depth of my losses tonight is good. Am I completely feeling-less? am I becoming cold and uncaring? It puzzles me that I'm not weeping and stomping around that the one man I lived for and loved was taken by an unfair and brutal cancer, and the businesses we built together were yanked away with the stroke of a pen.
Maybe the courage I've been practicing is taking hold; maybe my faith is being enlarged in ways that allow me to cope with the daily events that life throws at me. I feel less paralyzed and more surrendered to the process of being changed. Over the past few weeks I've been praying and thinking about what the future holds for me. Out of that reflection came an enormous decision: At the end of the summer, I will stop working and spend more time processing exactly what happened last year; to rest and become stronger to face what lies ahead for me. With my house for sale, I'll start over in a new location, make new friends, find a new church, maybe a new job. I'll wake up each morning and have coffee on the patio; welcome friends to come stay with me; go to wineries; maybe buy a convertible and take a drive by the lake. I'll rest more and work less. I'll find new places to explore, take a trip, babysit my grandbabes, spend more time encouraging and blessing others, leave my critical self in the dust, inject love and time into others. By investing in my own physical and emotional healing, I will once again feel I have something to give away.This is a year of firsts -- learning to live alone is challenging and although I don't recommend it, it is something I have been thrust into and I embrace all that comes with it. I will practice courage....daily and embrace all the good things life will bring as I face the future.
In his book Heaven, Randy Alcorn talks about what heaven will be like: "Seeing God will be like seeing everything else for the first time. We will discover that seeing God is our greatest joy, and life itself. Beholding and knowing God, we will see ourselves, and all other people and events, through God's eyes." I pray for eyes that see people as God sees them: with love and grace.
Thank you to everyone who has walked alongside me on this grief journey, thank you for reading my innermost feelings with tenderness and reverence, and thank you for understanding I am fragile and weak.
Count it all joy, my brothers,when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1: 2-4
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