Grace In Between

(Originally published on Monday, October 5th)

I have officially made it to the one week mark. Seven whole days. Seven days since my Cathy – my mentor, confidante, second mom, and best friend – entered the Land of the Living. In some ways it feels like it has been years, and in other ways, only minutes. All of my people have been gracious in asking what I need and asking how I am doing, and my answer has been the same for all seven days; “It depends on the moment.”

It is difficult to explain the constant up-down-up-down that grief is. It’s indefinable. Abstract. Complicated. Grief doesn’t follow a rulebook or a timeline. It doesn’t feel the same all day, or even the same for an hour. Some moments, I feel extreme peace. At the drop of a hat, anxiety will take my breath away. What will life look like without her? What will I do when she’s not here for this day, or this event, or this milestone? Within 5 minutes, it could change to heavy sobs. I have to talk about her in the past tense now. It could also quickly shift to denial. There’s no way she’s gone. This isn’t real. This impermanency of moments and the realization of how quickly things change has altered the way I think about most things.

Mostly, it’s greatly increased my gratefulness for a God who is outside of moments.

So I am constantly fighting the weight of these moments– the thought that these moments define how I will function today or in the coming days. The truth is that I am not defined by my grief, or my fears, or my questions. I’m defined by a God who is outside of all of these moments. And although He is in these moments with me and hurts with me, they do not take Him by surprise as they do me. And while to me the grief feels as if it will last forever, He is currently seeing exactly what my forever looks like. And He is going to graciously carry me until the day that I see it too.

And while I wish I had this really awesome powerful conclusion for you, I don’t. I just have this: grief that feels like a mountain bigger than I can climb, and pain that feels different in each moment. And because God has already created a perfect forever and my Jesus gave everything so it could be within my reach, that’s all any of my hurt will ever be. A moment.