These past few months have been a little crazy. I’ve had the privilege of walking through some days of loneliness with friends, some days of serious health issues, and some days of dying. I’ve had my own moments of loss of friendship and maybe a sense of a loss of connection to people who have been in my life for a long time. To put it mildly, it pretty much sucks.
I think people of a certain age start looking back at their life, sometimes with regrets, and sometimes just simply acknowledging that they did the best that they could do. Part of my looking back lately is considering the relationships that I’ve been blessed to have, and the sadness I feel that they, for any number of reasons, are no longer part of my life. I find myself wondering what kind of friend I have been and wishing I had been better.
Grief and joy. The sadness that something that was is no longer, balanced against the joy of remembering sweet times together. Someone once told me that everything has a season and that includes friendships. It doesn’t mean losing a relationship doesn’t hurt. Seeing someone go on and you are no longer in the mix can be more painful than the finality of death. We miss the joy the relationship brought to our lives. It is like the season turns from spring to fall and the coldness of winter to the soul.
We live in a disposable world. Trinkets, phones, appliances are readily trashed and replaced with something new and shiny. And so it can be in our lives as we move from one season of relationship to another. I wonder though if we are too quick to throw away our connections without taking stock of the emotional toil it brings. We often don’t realize we are walking in the grief of loss which may hinder our ability to consider a better way. Breaking the connection we have with another human-especially if that person is family or a soul friend- is like walking death. And yet I admit I am just as guilty as the next person to keep walking forward, with the hole in my heart and sadness in my step…moving beyond the hurt and emptiness without repair.
Dying and death and physical suffering are different. I have witnessed physical and emotional pain friends and family experience. I keep seeing a strange mystical undertone of peace and joy that I didn’t expect to find. I find myself searching for words to explain what it’s like to trust that a higher power is holding these things together. I ponder the way joy seeps into the cracks with a hope for something more. Maybe it is a hope for healing. Maybe it is seeing God in the midst of pain in an unexplainable way. Maybe it is walking with someone transitioning from life on earth that opens us to wanting to believe there is more.
All these emotions can happen at once as we ricochet from crying to smiling and back from joy to emptiness. This is the broken world in which we live. Some things we are beyond our ability to change. Somethings we are waiting and praying will change. It isn’t always easy to know the difference. For me, I try to lean into the power I call God and try to listen for direction and peace and the next right thing for me to do. Sometimes I am led to act and sometimes led to wait for others. Sometimes I am called to simply sit with God and trust that The Divine is at work in the hearts and lives of all of us.
maggiemarcum 