The Monstrous View from Here

It’s MOVE week! I am packing. I am saying goodbye to a home and selling various pieces of furniture. 

This might be the hardest emotional week yet since February - when I hit a real low emotionally and physically with back pain and grief processing. Thankfully I am physically stronger but the emotional memories are soaring high as I navigate this current reality.

I don’t know how I feel exactly, but everything is a bit sensitive as the reality continues to hit that this is my last week living in our home in Arkansas. 

Our home. 

I’m leaving our home to move to my home. The change is fun, exciting. It’s new and different. It’s filled with possibilities. Yet, as I write this, it's almost like I am still trying to convince myself. Maybe I still am. Knowing the truth and accepting the truth is still a challenge no matter the topic. 

In this case, perhaps it’s because the lingering battle scars still remain sensitive. The hope for healing and the feelings of angst that filled me so many times as I laid on the couch – that I just sold – on numerous days and nights next to Josh’s hospital bed, have shaped me greatly. This loss has created a chasm of change and a lingering ripple effect that still hurts. 

After Josh passed I rearranged the recently sold couches several times in an effort to cover the space where the hospital bed was. Now the space is highlighted as it and the two neighboring couches are also gone. Change is happening visibly once again. Letting go of this whole house will be good and hard.

Truthfully, I am glad the couches are gone because I don’t enjoy dwelling on our sad memories or feeling stuck there. And although there is much hope to embrace today the harder memories reach out like a monster from the shadows of grief. Emotions trigger and I feel a bit lost at times. Thankfully, God knows where I am.

A refrain I often heard Josh say, and one I also repeat is, “Lord help me. Be with me.” Sometimes it’s all there is to say. 

It's early in the week, and I can already tell it’s going to be a tricky week to navigate. Lord help me. As I literally move forward my hope is to NOT box up the emotions that go with this transition but to keep acknowledging them honestly.

Grief is hard stuff! And often the movement and changing seasons amplifies every part of it.

For my friends and fellow grievers, this is just a general report of where I am today as I embrace a big move in the year of 2020! Oh boy!

Thanks for your prayers in a week of big transition and letting go in many ways. 

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