I leave old sticky notes from my mother around the house because… what else should I do with them when I find them? I don’t want to throw them away and I don’t want to put them away, either. So they sit out, collecting dust, beguiling to be read, hauntingly there.
In the first few weeks following Mom’s death, so many loving people gave and gave and gave. Aside from meals that nourished my whole family, people gave me face masks, candles, stickers, socks, etc.
Peoples’ hearts can be so beautiful in heartbreak.
At the time, I had so little capacity to process the gifts, so I set them aside as if part of a collection. Now, I can’t even remember who all gave things. Someone gave me a necklace — I don’t remember who now. She gave a card, but it was separated from the necklace. I can’t remember who to say “thank you,” to… but…
Thank you.
Thank you each person who gave food or a card or some piece of comfort. Thank you for reaching out, thank you for reading these, thank you for commenting, thank you for showing up and bearing witness to a pain that seems as unbearable as it is. It’s not easy or comfortable to watch this incomprehensible level of pain. I know many of you who knew and loved my Momma hurt too, and many of you who simply know me hurt for me. Thank you for giving out of your pain and for showing up.
I tried to go through that collection of gifts — those tokens of love and comfort — yesterday, 133 days later, but I still can’t get through it. It’s still too raw, it’s still too fresh of a reminder that my world was ripped apart… that my Mommy is gone. Yet, the things that I got through reminded me of all the love you have given me and all of the love you had for my Momma. It felt raw to touch and see these gifts of love from people I could not even remember. So I will try again another day, and be reminded once more of all this love.
Love is all we have left, and love is both enough and not impossibly enough at all. But love does, as the old saying teaches, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends,” and what is grief but love that persists?
The sorrow that I dreaded has made its home in my heart, where it will forever languish.
I am so sad, forever.
Perplexing thoughts cross my mind and the minds as many as people try to make sense of this situation, but it is truly senseless. My mom’s death highlights mental illness — mentally sound people do not and cannot end their own lives. There is no reason, there is no “why,” there is nothing to blame or to conclude about this situation other than the advancement of mental illness. My mother hid it extremely well. She knew well what mental illness is, and perhaps she did not realize the depth of her own struggles until her mind was too impaired.
She didn’t do this to us, she didn’t do this at us, she didn’t do this in spite of us.
There is much we don’t know and won’t understand and to a point, it doesn’t really matter: nothing will bring her back.
My Mom’s death doesn’t forfeit her love, it doesn’t forfeit what she believed, and it doesn’t forfeit all she strived to do and who she wanted to be.
In her right mind and in her fullest, she loved life. Her laughter filled the room and bellowed from every conversation. Her smile beamed brightest around her family and with her friends. She loved getting to discover the depth of others by asking provocative questions and teasing the answers out of one another. She loved Jesus and she wanted to experience the fullness of life that God promises here on earth (John 10:10). She was passionate about mental health and desperately wanted to see others healed on this side of eternity, and I think she believed that wholly for herself, too.
Mom fought a horrific battle that she could not share with us, and while that hurts us more than anything, these facts detail a torment she kept in the shadows. If only, if only she applied her studies and reached out in the way she encouraged others to do. Maybe she spent so much time encouraging others in the hopes that she, too, would find the courage to reach out.
She wanted to make a difference, she wanted to heal. She wanted so much from this life that gave her so much. Her life was beautiful and full of laughter and love, and, in her best moments, she felt that wholly.
My mom did not die because of any one thing: she died fighting an unspeakable battle, one we’ll never know how long she fought. This painful reality scorches my heart and sometimes it feels impossible to believe that my life is good and beautiful and kind, when all feels so dark and cruel.
But I know — I know, somehow, there is grace in this. My family and I have so much life left to live, and our lives will be filled with laughter and love and goodness and opportunity that we cannot begin to imagine right now. We are blessed. We are blessed with each other, we are blessed with our outstanding community who supports and mourns with us, and we were blessed with my Mom.
My Mom was a light and a gift that I will never have again, and her absence brings tumultuous tears to my eyes each day. While this is so dark, my Mom was not all of the light in the world.
I will carry this grief with me forever, but this sadness and this grief does not dismiss the many years of joy and abundance still to come.
Grief gifts us with a new understanding of God and life and the universe. It strips us bare of any preconceived ideas rooted in anything but truth, and the fire of affliction will bring about unimaginable glory.
Right now, it’s physically impossible for us to imagine or even desire a good life when my Mom was what made our old lives so good, but we will experience blessing and healing and a new good life.
I have a lot of unread messages and a lot of comments I haven’t responded to, but I see them. I like to save them for nights and when I can’t sleep.
I am grateful for your overwhelming support, for the food, the gift cards, the cards, the encouraging messages, the comments, the phone calls. Thank you.
It’s hard to fathom we’re all here. It’s hard to accept. I wish so badly it wasn’t real — we all do. I am so sorry, I am so sorry for our loss. I am sorry you’re hurting so much, too.
My Mom had a beautiful and vast influence. She touched the hearts of many, and now the many mourn. I am sorry we’re all working through the weight of this quizzical grief.
I’m so sorry for my mom. I am so sad for her. I am endlessly sad for her. This is not what she would have wanted.
I am so haunted by answerless questions, and I know we all are. After Patrick died, one of my professors said “Knowing ‘why’ rarely helps,” and I have wholly believed that for years. Knowing why would never be enough — we would all think “we could have worked this out.”
I loved my Mom so much. I know we all did. I know that, in her right mind, she knew that too. I am devastated that she did not leave earth feeling that love. Maybe, maybe in her last few moments she did. Maybe she felt it all as she drew her last breath. Maybe she did, I hope she did.
When Patrick died, I had this vision of him entering heaven with tears pouring from his eyes while he said “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Jesus held him and said “It’s over, it’s over. You’re home now.”
I haven’t gotten a vision like that with my mom. Truthfully, I haven’t been able to picture her much at all… I think it is too painful for my mind to recollect at this point.
I am so sad her mind lied so cruelly, and I will forever be sad of that.
I wish so bad I could hold her hand one more time and remind her how much we love her. I wish so desperately she wasn’t gone. I would have loved more than anything to bear our burdens together. I know we all would.
I know this life will be good without my Mom, and I know too well how God brings grace and beauty from horror. But I hate that I have to say goodbye, and I hate that it will be good without my Mom. It reminds me so much of Tolkien’s famous words:
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam. Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.
Losing a parent feels like losing one’s foundation.
Losing a parent to suicide feels like finding out one’s entire life was a lie.
Distraught – that has been the word most on my mind today.
Suicide makes one relive and rethink every interaction with the lost loved one, and, today, it’s made me angry. I’m angry my Mom is gone. I’m envious of everyone who gets to have a mom. I see a mother loving her young children, and I think of my mother and how much I know she loved me and our family. But I see a mom with her young children and can’t help but think how could you [Mom] do this to me?
How could she be so hopeless? She truly had so many things she loved, looked forward to, and enjoyed about life. She never uttered a word about hopelessness, but it was there. Maybe it was always there.
Maybe every day for the past 51 years was a blessing, maybe every day was one more day than she thought possible. Who knows? We’ll never know, so it almost doesn’t even matter.
I am distraught. I am distraught that my mother had these thoughts. I am distraught that she couldn’t think of all the beautiful things she had to live for in her last day on earth. I’m distraught because, as hopeless as she clearly was, she did have so much that she loved and so much that she did look forward to.
I am distraught because I am angry with my mother for choosing this. I am angry at God for allowing it — which is likely bad theology, honestly. God gave man the power to choose, and my mother chose poorly on that day. I am distraught because I have to have all of these thoughts and think through all of these things. I am distraught because every day feels like I’m learning something tragic I didn’t know — as if my life hadn’t had enough tragedy in it already.
Thanks, Mom.
I am distraught because I loved my mom. I loved her so much, and any of us would have done anything for her. I am distraught because she hurt immeasurably bad and there is nothing I can ever do about that, ever. I am distraught because I will carry this cross with me for the rest of my life.
I am distraught because I know that God is good, and that God will bring good and beautiful things into my life — things I will never get to share with my mother, whom I loved so much.
I am distraught because I have to watch my Dad and brothers not have a wife and a mother. I am distraught because I have to watch my husband and my in-laws not have their mother in law. I am distraught because I have to watch her friends not have their friend. My beautiful Momma.
I am distraught because she did this. I am distraught because, in her mind, she had to do this. I am distraught that people’s minds can do that to them.
I am distraught that little things in my house get messy — my bathtub needs cleaned, my library has books and pens that I don’t know what to do with because I’m still using them and still reading them.
I am proud. I am proud that I am brushing my hair every day. I am proud that I am getting up every day. I am proud that I am leaving the house every day. I am proud that Dad and I are going on bike rides every day. I am proud that I am eating every day. I am proud that I am showering [almost] every day — sometimes I don’t remember if I have or haven’t showered, but I know I’m brushing my hair and teeth each day. I am proud that I am exercising every day. I am proud that I am going to therapy. I am proud that I am doing the bare minimum to at least be physically okay. I am proud that I started reading my Bible each day. I am proud that I am letting people help and support me. I am proud of a lot, and I am thankful for a lot.
Parents really are foundational. I feel like a house whose foundation has cracked in half. Restore me, Lord, for I my foundation crumbled.
I have enough without my mom. My life is still good without my mom, but, God, I wish I had my mom to share my life with.
Tomorrow will be the first day without any guests. All have gone home, and my father, my brother, and I will experience our first bouts of alone time. It’s necessary, it’s healing, and it will likely be painful.
Torrents of grief, sacred and terrible, assuage we mourners. I’ve loved and appreciated the depth and beauty of sadness, but I still hate enduring it at this level of intensity. Sorrow opens one’s eyes to a new world and demands a new perspective from the sufferer. This new perspective can make one bitter or it can make him or her more compassionate, but it either way the perspective shift prompts a response.
Grief is traumatic. It assaults the mind and the nervous system. It manifests itself in sadness and anxiety. It steals sleep from some and it keeps others in bed for days. It produces shaky hands and sore eyes. It creates fear and mistrust. It eliminates filters and threatens boundaries that otherwise would protect its victims.
We aren’t strong, we mourners, we are incredibly weak. We are at our most vulnerable and most sensitive. We are raw. We hurt, often more than we ever deemed imaginable or bearable. Yet, we bear it.
Some watch mourners with awe and amazement — unsure how we could function. Some are offended if a mourner is snappy or not as “bubbly” as normal. Some prefer to look away, noting how painful it is to even think about what a mourner endures.
Grief manifests differently in every individual because of the uniqueness of every single relationship; while that makes each person’s experience vastly personal, a wondrous communal aspect exists when we mourn the same individual.
It’s private, and it’s not. It’s personal, and it’s shared.
Mourning callously brings out both the best and the worst in people, because we join together in our grief but can quickly isolate from offenses and hurts. We are vulnerable, we are tired, and we are boundlessly sad.
When we love each other and show up for one another and extend continuous grace — that is when we mourn well.
We mourn because we lost someone so incredibly precious, and we cannot stop loving them. Love transcends time, space, and even death. Love well.
Above all, love each other deeply for love covers a multitude of sins
There’s a weight so heavy on my chest I feel like I can barely breathe. It feels like I am operating at 50% of my normal capacity, if that. It feels so heavy. What does that even mean? Why does it legitimately feel like there is a weight pressed against my lungs, collapsing them? How does that work? How does the body do that?
I thought we had something special, me and my mom. I thought we had a great relationship. Now I feel like I didn’t even know her. Who was this woman I spent so much time with? I thought she liked being with me, I thought she wanted to be in my life, I thought she wanted to be here. But in the end, she wanted to leave me. It wasn’t worth it for her to stay in my life. She didn’t want to see me grow up anymore. I thought we were going to be two old ladies together. I thought she wanted me. I thought she wanted me. Did she think I did not love her? Why weren’t we enough?
I hate my name. I’ve hated it for a long time. My mom gave me this name because she hoped so badly for me… what good did that do for her? It’s so cruel to be named Hope when it feels like so many people in my world are hopeless.
“Hopey, you’re my Hope. You make me believe that everything’s going to be okay and that we’re really going to make it.” That’s what my brother Patrick told me two days before he ended his life. Once he died, I really started to hate my name.
Before that, I was always a pessimist. It felt so ironic to be called “hope” when I so seldom experienced hope myself.
Now this? I hate my name. It feels so cruel tonight.
Why did I start writing these? I keep asking myself that. More precisely, why did I start publishing these? I’ve loved writing for my entire life. I used to write fantastical stories, dreaming worlds late into the night when I was just a young girl. Then in puberty I started writing to cope with my ever-changing world. Now, I almost exclusively write when my emotions cloud my head, spill out of my eyes, and pours from an ink pen onto a blank page.
So, why did I start publishing these?
After Patrick died, I seriously isolated myself. I did not answer my phone for over a month and I had no desire to make contact with the outside world.
In our American culture, grief is so private. Suicide is beyond taboo, and people in mourning may be given three days of bereavement leave. Three days… how pathetic. Our culture almost treats grief like something to be ashamed of or to be quickly gotten over. Because of this, death and grief are seldom discussed and very few — especially at my ripe old age of 27 — people have much of a framework/understanding of mourning and grief.
Grief shouldn’t isolate. It should be something that pulls us all together, something that makes us stop and hold one another closer, something that prompts us to change our lives for the better.
As my friend Olivia Chancellor always says “Alone is a lie.” Maybe if I share my thoughts, others will have the courage to share theirs too. Thoughts can be scary and painful and feel so isolating, but alone is a lie. “Everything that is exposed by the light becomes visible–and everything that is illuminated becomes light,” Ephesians 5:13. It’s only when we share our darkest thoughts that we are truly able to heal from them.
I want to live. I want to have a life full of beauty and joy and pain and wonder. I want to experience it all. I want to be fully present. I want to experience life to the full in every possible way, no matter how it hurts.
I don’t want to move on from this. I will be carrying this for the rest of my life, and I want to grow and learn to carry this with grace and love and even hope. I want to live, and I want to live well.
Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
I Corinthians 13:7-8
I wrote in a letter to my deceased friend’s parents three years ago (2020).
You hear the verses in weddings, but are they not just as applicable at funerals?
Grief is love that endures – beyond life and beyond loss. It endures. It remains. It loves against all things, against hope, and against the belief for its object of adoration to return.
In the end, it’s love that goes on.
It can make us bitter or it can make us springs of life and of hope and of beauty once more.
Where there were once caverns of bitterness, may there be fields of tenderness.
Where there were once deserts of anger, may there be harbors of forgiveness
Where there were once rivers of sorrow, may there be streams of mercy.
Love transforms us in unfathomable ways. Lost love breaks us with the bleakest measures, but our response to love and love lost distinguishes us entirely.
Some respond out of anger, some shut down in sorrow, and some pretend through avoidance. Each response is unique, with each respondent clinging to the response that feels the most emotionally safe.
Friends and strangers hold their breath and peer at grievers in hopes of a response that will provide them with an image of the grievers’ hearts.
How quick we are to observe the unfathomable, but how slow we are to communicate the tragedy. We look with bravery but cower in speechlessness. All the while, the griever, the sufferer, sits in isolation and trapped in love’s loss.
With fortitude, the sufferer remembers his or her enduring love and allows that mercy to shape the day. Love and truth tear away the temptation bitterness invites: these tools patch up lost love’s damage.
Patched, but not healed. Bandaged, but not mended. The sufferer must reach out beyond the frailty of his or her understanding and leap towards something more. The promise of more – the promise of the fullness of life.
Choosing to trust God beyond all belief, the griever leaps into freedom and the chance for redemption. The chance to experience the beauty of life and the beauty of love restored. The chance to overcome bitterness with a happiness long forgotten. The chance to live abundantly despite every odd being against the individual.
This, this is love enduring. This is love unending. This is love restoring, healing, and beginning.
In the busyness of life, I nearly forgot my own. I nearly forgot my past – who I was, where I was, what life was like while I was there.
I nearly forgot the tears, the heartache, and the traumas. I nearly forgot that I was such a young girl dealing with such developed problems. I was such a child, scared, and hiding, yet mandated to make mature decisions.
I was 14 the first time I witnessed someone lose his mind to the brink of insanity.
Summer 2012
What a child.
I was so young, enduring too much beyond my own comprehension.
Even now, colleagues marvel at what I went through, and yet I expect myself to be normal – to act like a person unacquainted with loss and torment.
Torment. Absolute torment. It was hell and I didn’t even know it, because hell had become normal.
Normal was hiding, wrapping clothes around me as a shelter to cry in peace. So much hiding. So much crying.
And I never could have imagined how much worse it could get. Oh, so much worse.
I can’t believe that was my normal. I can’t believe how much I hid from the world. Hide and hide and hide.
No wonder I have such difficulty grasping out of hiding.
I lived in Sheol. Abaddon was my home. I can’t believe I lived through it.
In some ways, I think I always knew someone would die. Maybe I knew, somehow, that something else would destroy me. Maybe. Maybe I knew that I needed to be destroyed. Maybe it was always there in the back of my mind, hiding safely behind the clothes of denial.
I loved. That is the crime that caused me so much pain. That’s the face I saw in the grave. A man so wounded, he forced gravity to take the life out of him. I was 21 years old when my brother stole his life from my arms, and I’m still trying to come to terms with that reality.
Just when I think I’m going to be
okay, the Pain materializes, reeling me backwards. He grips me by the waist and drags me back,
viciously ripping through the cavern between my lungs. I attempt to remain calm, strong, and
steady, but the horror engulfs my helpless body, robbing my mind of the ability
to fight; so I let Pain do what he must until
I’m numb and lifeless. Sometimes there
are tears, more often it’s a silent defeat.
The ambush renders me vulnerable and knocked down: my fears and my
weakness keep me pinned to the floor. He
hijacks me of all breath, and I halt: If I process
enough now, maybe he won’t attack me for a little while longer.
If
I stay here long enough, maybe I’ll learn how to get up again.
With new crevices carved into the cavern between my lungs, I’m weak, I’m
alone, and it it’s dark. Oh so very dark.
I’m weary. My eyes year to rest and the gloom tempts me
to surrender. Alone, this Pain attacked
me. Pain contends to conquer as tears
swallow my widening pupils, and, for a moment, he does win.
He comes haphazardly, begging for
me to release him—Pain reminds me to feel.
He reminds me to heal. He reminds
me to rest. He humiliates me.
When I’m hapless in his grasp and
I think that all is lost, Pain flees. My
pupils dilate to a soothing light—the Father.
As suddenly as Pain assaulted, Christ enters, picking me up and tenderly
drawing me into him. He pierces through
my shame, in my sorrow, and amidst my pain and becomes my strength. While I am oh so weak, he carries my burden
in exchange for his own. He liberates me
from my despair, calming all my fears, and restores me in his presence and with
his community. He reminds me of his
faithfulness amidst a world prone to abandonment.
While I lie bruised and bleeding,
he cleanses me of the wounds and addresses each trauma as it arises, assault after
assault, revealing the the stripes he paid for my ransom.
I crumble before him, grateful, humble,
and in awe of this loving Father. He
dresses my wounds and sends me back to my safe community—his church, his
nurses—who see my lacerations and come along my side to help me heal.
No, they weren’t assaulted by Pain
this time, but their pasts preserve the stories of their own scars. This time, they’re stronger and they’re
waiting to help change my wounds. They
don’t have my PTSD, they don’t live with my the memories, and they don’t know my
horrors, but they see the manifestations of my fresh injuies.
With God guiding us all, they
come along my side and teach me how to walk again. I’m nimble and uncoordinated, requiring
tenderness and patience. I’m more
sensitive than before. I’m afraid, but I
don’t want to be paralyzed forever, so I continue learning to walk by pressing
into God and into his church.
I’m a survivor. I survived the initial assault. I live in the aftershock. The horror has ceased, but its affects linger
on.
— — —
I am healing—slowly, messily,
gracefully, and dutifully—healing.
The days fluctuate: some are
easier than others, some I cannot seem to concentrate and conceal the
tears. Others follow the pattern detailed
above; sometimes the emotions surprise me and I feel like I should be “over it”
by now, holding myself to a nearly impossible standard that, in turn, prompts
me to feel failure, inadequacy, and guilt.
Grief is love that has lost its object of affection, and one cannot
simply terminate one’s love, even if that love has been stripped from him or her.
So, I take “one step forward, and
five steps behind,” and my healing progresses.
In the first three months after
Patrick died, absolutely nothing made sense anymore. All of my hopes and dreams and understandings
collapsed within those months, and I was terribly afraid to live and to breathe
and to know and to be known by others. I
was angry with God and angry with myself.
Disillusioned and then disappointed, I thwarted any intrusive thoughts
of hope and of goodness. Life couldn’t be
good, I
thought. But, realistically, I was [am?]
afraid to hope that life could be good again.
My hopes had been so violently stolen from me that I dreaded the thought
of hoping again. How can one continue to
hope when someone else continuously takes everything she’s hoped for? No, I won’t reduce myself to hoping again, I bitterly resolved.
Hope is a terrifying thing. While alive, she helps us receive joy and
cherish moments of mundanity, but if she perishes, we’re left behind with the
trauma and disappointment of “hope deferred” (Proverbs 13:12).
Nothing made sense anymore, and I did not want
to make sense of anything my family and I were left behind with. I harbored so much pain that I became too
terrified to face it alone. Most people
I live near hardly knew Patrick—I cannot emphasize how isolated that can make
one feel—and yet those nearest to me continue to graciously love, support, and
encourage me despite my inability to pour myself out at this time. God’s kindness and mercy broke through my
“shelter” of self-preservation and He’s teaching me how to breathe in this new
rhythm of life.
Perhaps we search for depth in
others because it helps us process the depth of ourselves; we need one another
and speaking helps more than I can explain.
At first, I was so afraid to voice my pain. I was afraid that those around me would not
be able to “handle” the truth of where my heart resides and would invalidate my
feelings and my questionings, but, nonetheless, those in my life persisted to
investigate my heart despite my protests.
God has opened my eyes and continuously opens them to see his mercy, and
my dear friends continuously pursue me to show me how much they care about
me.
In this season, I don’t have much
to give. I’m overflowing with questions
and slowly coming to a new understanding of life itself. I am inquisitive and I am learning.
I have to remind myself that the
worst has already passed, and now I can enjoy a season of disciplined healing:
one cannot heal if he or she lacks the willingness to do so. Every day is new, every moment is precious. I
see and feel new growth and new life all around me as I rest in God and I
pursue healing in the shelter of his love. God has been so kind to remove my fears and to
reveal new truths to me.
I am hurting, and this will always hurt, but I am happy and I am abiding in peace.
“You never give up on me”, the amazement flowed from the tears in Patrick’s eyes.
But, I thought, the truth is that I gave up on you years ago.
Yet I’m still here.
Maybe I tricked myself into believing that I gave up on you. Maybe it’s because I was well acquainted with the pain you cause[d], but I’m thankful that you realized I hadn’t given up on you even when I thought I had.
No, I never gave up on you. I believed in every single breath you gave.
— — —
I spent the last two months two months pretending that the most horrific events of my past did not happen. I went on eight different trips and visited 13 different cities; it’s funny how you can trick your mind into believing false narratives simply because you long for something greater. I want to believe that earnestness exists, that redemption persists, and that goodness triumphs.
But I don’t.
Or, at least, I didn’t.
Eight trips filled with laughter and memories, yet the plane rides or car drives confronted me with the realities I so desperately wished to ignore. On the plane and in the car–that’s where I fell apart.
You can only smile for so long before tears force their way out, leaving you exposed to an onlooking world. And on airplanes?? Lord bless those sitting next to me… they didn’t ask for this mess. Though, neither did I.
Thoughts on my final plane ride brutally scorned me: “If I love God, how could I _____?” “If you love someone, why do you purposefully act malignant?” “If I had done _____ would he still be here?”
One’s mind and heart quickly betray him in times of immense tragedy, rendering him confused and pained. Mine convinced me to ignore reality again and again and again, until reality assaulted my mind into submission. You cannot outrun the truth, no matter how bleak it is.
— — —
It’s was Tuesday night, three months and one day since we found out about my Patrick’s demise.
I’m in church and it’s dark. Unable to hold anything back, I release emotions I do not deserve to have–no one should endure circumstances like this.
My roommate Lauren reaches over:
“I’m proud of you, Hope. You’re finally grieving.”
Aaaaand I’ve cried everyday since. Moments so full of anguish that I stop breathing and have to literally remind myself how to function. WELCOME TO GRIEF, HOPE. It’s about time…
— — —
April 24, 2019
“I feel like we are a team specifically you and me to beat this. It means alot,” Patrick texts me.
“That’s right we are. You are going to beat this. Absolutely.”
“Every time I see you, you say we got this and i actually believe it for once”
I believed it too, Patrick. I believed it too. I still cannot believe that you are gone.
— — —
When you lose someone you love, it is as though all light has departed. Reality dims. Hope fades. Confusion suffocates.
Recklessness ensues when you stop believing in redemption: Satan tempts you to believe that actions are meaningless. You grew weary in doing good works. Look where they got you? I questioned as the tears soaked my sweatshirt.
The truth is, there are some things we will never let go of; we must live through the emptiness and press on because of Christ’s mercy. Sometimes the most disheartening circumstances are the manifolds of God’s mercy. While it’s laborious to perceive, there is much glory in earth’s eternal despondency.
I tried to stop hoping. I attempted to “give up” on those that I love dearly as a coping mechanism, but I cannot.
Even after the tragedies I’ve witnessed first-hand–no matter how “safe” disassociation and pessimism may make me feel–I cannot stop believing in redemption.
I don’t recognize much “light” these days. Engulfed in darkness, wrestling through disappointment and heartache: nonetheless, I still believe in redemption.
I see hurting people all around me, the heartbroken who respond by attempting to break themselves and to break those around them, but somehow I still believe in redemption. Side note: Please, seek help and guidance when you need it, friends. No one is past redemption’s threshold–if he would only focus on what he knows to be true. Not all is lost.
In The Fellowship of the Rings, Tolkien exemplifies the relationship between hope and heartache: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
I cannot see the goodness in this situation, and I feel far more broken than I can express, but I trust and I hope in what I know is True.
Exposed 