OKAY Will Come

A wife dying from breast cancer

posed the question this week of

when,

after her death,

would OKAY reach her husband…

when,

after her death,

will real breathing,

not the “having to remember to breathe,”

happen…

and

when,

after her death,

will the new normal come?

While acknowledging that everyone is different

and every grief path is an individual path

traveled only by the mourner,

what follows,

from my own experience,

was my answer to her.

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  It will come - in its time.  

OKAY will come.

It will come

after

a lot of mourning,

a lot of crying,

a lot of prayer,

a lot of wishing it was different,

a lot of trying to understand why not having a father (in my case)

would be part of my children's stories,

and after a lot of pure "missing."

But it will come.

Slowly, OKAY will slide back in.

Slowly, OKAY will let him breathe without having to remember to.

Slowly, OKAY will cover him in grace and wisdom

to "only" (not single) parent your children.

Slowly, OKAY will change the waves of grief to waves of comfort.

Slowly, God will heal the broken heart.

And every single bit of it will be mercy and grace.

Just as God has allowed you to walk your path of illness

with the mercy and grace you show so well through your writing –

so will God allow him to walk the

path of mourning all the way to OKAY.

I want to assure you, though, that OKAY does NOT mean forgetting.

With OKAY comes the ability to remember without sobbing.

With OKAY comes the ability to "see" reminders in the

children's characteristics with smiles and not stabs of missingness.

With OKAY comes the ability to let the memories

of what it felt like to fall in love

feel like a soothing balm to the open wound of loss.

Having been a preacher’s daughter and a preacher’s wife

and having worked at a counseling center,

I thought I understood the grief process.

But I truly had no idea

until my late husband died and I lived and am living it.

But I also never knew,

until then,

what the “peace that passes understanding” meant either.

Just as surely as God is holding you

and keeping you right now during your illness,

God will hold and keep him in his “after.”

OKAY will come

and

it will start with the knowledge

that you are held in the loving arms of our Jesus –

what more could we want for someone we love so dearly!?

And slowly, OKAY will settle in to stay –

and along with it

the sadness

that your love story on Earth is over

will start to take a backseat

to the gratefulness

that it happened at all.

So thankful that you two made it to the ocean once more

and are treating yourselves to enjoying the days at hand

and treating yourselves to making memories.

I pray God’s finest blessings for both of you.

Janna

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am grateful that it happened at all.