They say that you never "get over it" you can only learn to "live with it" when you lose a loved one.
Textbooks define grief in stages: Denial and Isolation, Anger, Barganing, Depression, and Acceptance. I'm not sure that I have experienced all of those in that exact order but I do know that I did experience some of them.
After my first miscarriage, because of the circumstances surrounding it and the immediate loss of my grandfather I pushed everything away and went through over a years period of denial. Then the memories came back to haunt me and I fell into a deep depression.
Many people have different views on depression but I certainly believe that it is real, it is not just a "heart problem", and as a nurse I understand that it can be effected by chemical imbalances. However there was a time during my depression that I remember making the cognitive choice to continue to wallow in my sadness and that is when I knew I was in the wrong. I was allowing my grief to take over my life.
Following my second miscarriage I was fine for a month or so and then I became angry. Losing my children was something that happened to me, I had no choice in the matter. I started to question God, because after all He created them. I just didn't understand (and I still don't I am just left to trust Him), why He would create a life just to take it?
If I could tell someone who is grieving any one thing it's ok to have any feeling that you may be experiencing: anger, sadness, depression; and it's ok to question God...
...for a time.
Don't let your feelings take over your life. I did for a time and I was miserable through my depression, to the point of contemplating suicide. I have heard depression being described as quicksand and at the time I was sinking fast.
Emotions and feelings are very real and they are given to us by God.
It is not wrong to have feelings or experience emotions they are God given.
I believe the difference between being an emotionally stable person and being a person who is emotionally unstable is whether you allow those emotions to take over every part of your life.
During my depression I allowed grief to become my God....
My husband and I are in the season of life where most of our friends are already married and are having children. After losing our second child I knew it was going to be extra hard because babies and everything to do with babies would be everywhere I turned. Is there a twinge of sadness every time I hear a friend announce they're expecting? Yes. When I see little ones do I miss my own? Yes.
But I won't allow it to change how I interact with those friends or how I treat them. It is not their fault they have been blessed with children at this time and God has seen fit for us to wait.
Being the mother of two heavenly babies is and always will be a part of who I am, but it is not who I am.
I am Ruth Anna Johnson Moore, wife, daughter, sister, hospice nurse, business owner, friend, lover of Jesus...
...and mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment