The Good, the Normal, the Bad

Maybe it's typical during this grief, but I don't often feel drawn to write on the good days.  Sometimes I write on the normal days, like today, but even rarer on the good. Maybe it's that on the good days, I want it to just be good, and I want to appreciate the break in the heartache and I want to just be, and live, and laugh.Not that I've forgotten about losing Jacob on the good days, but rather, on the good days, I think I'm learning to embrace living fully and appreciating life again... I'm catching my breath.The normal days consist of a dull aching, a pain etching its way in, taunting me with permanence and hopelessness in the midst of a good-enough disposition, sprinkled with some social awkwardness.  I don't know if it is callousing my heart or if it's simply part of my broken heart healing that causes the ache. Maybe it's a revealing of the hurt underneath it all, but maybe it's a new hurt.  Maybe it's a greater understanding of what it means to continue to process and recognize new places where there's the weight of this loss.  Maybe it's simply that I'm learning to limp and so, in the ache, I'm growing stronger muscles elsewhere.And then there are the hard days.  The days where the tears start in the morning and they don't finish until bedtime.  The days that go fine but then finish with several hours of sobbing and questioning and anger and pain.  The days where I wake up and realize that this just isn't going to be a good day, the hole is too big and gaping and obvious and never to diminish or be filled.  I lose it on random afternoons and the unraveling pieces of my hurt give way to more brokenness and more frustration.I'm so thankful that it's not always one of those days or the other but that I have a mix of all three.  It'd be devastating to never experience the hope that the good days bring, and equally so to not remember the deep love I have for my son on the days when things are hard. And to live fully in an extreme would just be impossible to sustain, and exhausting.As someone who was inexperienced with much grief until last August and who is in the throes if it all now, I'm learning so much about how truly painful and long this all is.I'll think I've gotten some parts figured out and then I realize that my pain goes deeper, or wider, or farther into the future than I had initially planned on.  I'll think that it's hopeless and endless and despairing and then God refreshes me with hope that carries me for the next few days.  This journey is unpredictable.I'm wrestling. I'm trying to make sense of it as the dust is beginning to clear.  It's caused me to wonder what exactly God has for me in this life and has me questioning everything I once took for granted.  I'm having to look my fears in the face and decide if I can trust God or not with them.  I'm in process and I'm asking questions and quite honestly, it can feel scary.  What if God asks us to walk through this again? Or something else, something "worse"?  What if I never "bounce back" from this and my world is constantly surrounded in this chaos?  If God really who He says He is, do I really believe it in my heart?  And as I read any passage of the Bible... what does it all mean anyway?If nothing else, I've come to appreciate the reality that there's good and there's bad and it's all mixed in.  This life isn't predictable.  My grief isn't predictable.  And I have no control.  And I'm kind of thankful for that.I'm learning to be here, right where I am, to take it slow.  I'm learning that there's nothing that would be instant gratification and that it's okay. I can let myself continue to have the good days and the bad days and the normal days.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.  There are no real patterns for what this will be for me or won't be for me or that my experience will match anyone else's.In this season, I want to embrace where I am, in the good and the bad, and relearn to find my footing in the goodness of who God is.And even as I'm writing this, I'm remembering that during Jacob's life on Earth, in those intimate moments of my pregnancy, he showed me that there can be joy among the sorrow.  His life wasn't all bad.  In fact, it was quite good.  Too short, but good.  It's just that right now the ache of missing him is more painful than the memories of all that was beautiful about him.This journey of being a bereaved mother... it's bittersweet.  It's joy and it's sorrow. It's love and it's loss. I'd trade almost anything for Jacob to be alive with me, but because that isn't an option, I want to embrace all sides of it all.  I don't want to forget the good, but I don't want to erase the bad.  I need to know both; I need to have some good days and some bad.  I need the normal, too.I am free to despair because I have hope. I need the hope because I have the despair.  And in the words of Shauna Niequist in her book, Bittersweet, "Sometimes the happiest ending isn't the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are."Here's to embracing the views.