The first year is awful, but the truth is \u201cfirsts\u201d happen for years to come.\u00a0 When it comes to grieving Reed, later year milestones hurt as bad as the first Christmas. \u00a0He didn\u2019t get his driver\u2019s license nor earn a letter in football, and neither will he walk across the stage at the upcoming emptiness of graduation. I can only imagine all the firsts that will happen for those, like the Newtown families, who lost one so little.<\/p>\n
Heart-wrenching are the events that you didn\u2019t think a whole lot about but yet sneak up on you.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Those firsts apply to all the losses we grieve. I tried to call my Nannie on Christmas day only to realize that I don\u2019t know heaven\u2019s extension. \u00a0I grieve our three miscarried babies.\u00a0 For my little ones, the hardest days have always been the time of the loss, the first day of school, and the day we hang Christmas stockings.\u00a0 Those days always hit me hard. I seem to go through the motions, while my heart is literally aching.<\/p>\n
What I didn\u2019t expect was the physical and emotional response that I had two years ago at my church.\u00a0 We give Bibles to the first-graders.\u00a0 It is such a sweet day.\u00a0 These little bundles of energy are given a child\u2019s Bible with parents, grandparents and congregation looking on.\u00a0 There are flashes from cameras, big smiles, and rousing applause.\u00a0 There I sat, when suddenly I broke out into a sweat, my heart was pounding, and I started to feel flush.\u00a0 What in the world is going on here? Am I ill? <\/i><\/p>\n
Eventually, I knew the reason for the reaction; I should have a little one up there on the altar steps.\u00a0 I should have a camera, giving \u201ca big thumbs up\u201d to my little boy. Tears began to trickle down, slowly at first.\u00a0 Those tears turned to gushes of anguish until I had to excuse myself from the sanctuary.\u00a0 I sat in the foyer sobbing for a little boy that I never held in my arms, but I still hold in my heart.<\/p>\n
The hardest part was I knew that it was \u201cBible Sunday\u201d, and I hadn\u2019t paid it any attention with my habitual worry and fret.\u00a0 It just snuck up on me.\u00a0 Those are the firsts that are the most challenging \u2013 the ones you didn\u2019t even know you should be worried about. We all do it.\u00a0 It can be a smell that reminds you of your grandma\u2019s cooking, and then you miss her more. It can be a song on a radio, and you wish you had your mom to sing the harmony.\u00a0 It can be the fishing spot that was your best friend\u2019s special place. They sneak up and grab you when you didn\u2019t have time to batten down the hatches on your emotions.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, there are those who have walked this road before me.\u00a0 One of those friends told me, \u201cThe first year is difficult as you experience all the firsts, but the second year is much more difficult as your heart begins to realize that the ache and emptiness are always there.\u201d\u00a0 Her words didn\u2019t make it better, but they did offer hope.\u00a0 Hope that we would survive and that we weren\u2019t alone. But her words were also like \u201cmarching orders\u201d that someday we would be able to offer the same encouragement to another grieving family.<\/p>\n
I wonder if that is how God created grief.\u00a0 It is painfully debilitating, eliciting physical responses and numbing to the mind and soul.\u00a0 You walk through it \u2013 not always well \u2013 but somehow you pick up one foot and then another, until you wake up one day and it isn\u2019t the first thing that you think about it.\u00a0 Sadly, you do revisit it. Just as physical scars remind us of past injuries, heart scars remind us of our loss but also of our survival. Maybe God\u2019s plan is such that we can put that grief to good use to someday walking along someone else as they experience their own heartache.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know for certain if that is true, but I do know that God sent people to comfort me in my darkest hours.\u00a0 Even though it hurts like crazy, maybe just maybe, all those firsts, seconds, and even thirds will help me to love someone else.<\/p>\n
He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.<\/i><\/b> (New Living Translation \u00a9 2007)<\/p>\n
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