A Different Path

The grief path is like no other. 

It is cruel and alienating.  It changes your relationship with the world and those around you. You become a stranger in a world where your perspective cannot be fully understood by those around you who have not been touched by life’s biggest tragedy: losing half of yourself to eternity.

What is left is an open mortal wound in your heart and a bewildered mind.

Those around you encourage you to carry on, but they do not see that you are frozen in the moment of your loss.  You know you have to drag your feet forward somehow but you don't know where to start, you don't know how!   

“You have to live for your beloved now” the crowd cheers and encourages.  You are urged to continue on the path of life, but they do not see that you are utterly lost in pain.  

The familiar path is gone forever. The path that stretches ahead of you now is not the path you were on, it is not the one where you were walking hand-in-hand with your loved one.  The one you were meant to walk together...  

In front of you lies the unbeaten path and it looks dark and lonely.   You are lost without your beloved at your side.  Pain is ever with you.

I do not see a path that is easy to follow.  I see only the chasm that separates me from my beloved.  I strain my eyes but cannot see the end.  I feel caught between my world and where I long to be. I am no longer at home here because my heart took flight with my beloved.  But I am not yet able to join him yet so a different path I am forced to take.

Between my world and his there is only one way.  I have to trust in my God to walk with me in the dark. 

He now holds my hand and will carry me over the obstacles, because He knows the way and He knows how far I have to walk.  My time is in His hands.  My loved ones will encourage from behind, God at my side, you beckoning from beyond.  And when that time is fulfilled I will turn a corner one day and see a light: it will be my beloved – waiting to welcome me home.