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Waves of grief

I found the following on website that the link didn’t work when I sent it to anyone else so copied it and emailed it to a couple of people. But I’m sharing it here too because I think that this description is so accurate. It’s something that EVERYONE should read.

When Asked for Advice on How to Deal with Grief, This Old Man Gave the Most Incredible Reply

Someone on reddit wrote the following heartfelt plea online:

“My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Many people responded with words of encouragement, but one response in particular, by an older gentlemen, really stood out from the rest…

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love.

So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out.

But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

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I need a big stick

Do you ever do ridiculous things to try and help you remember things?

I was running today and I ran past this tree on a drive way. In fact I ran past it three times because i decided to go back and get a photo of it but didn’t want to be obvious so i had to run a few meters past it, turn around and then run back past it to continue on my way. It’s not a great photo because as I said it was taken whilst running but it captures what I wanted it to. It seemed worth going back to get a photo because of the thought process that God used it to prompt in my.

The thought:

That tree is so small, it’s roots aren’t established, and so that tree needs help. It needs a tree bigger than it is to help keep it up and help it settle into the ground.

As I think about weight loss and the past 16 or so months of actually achieving a steady loss and as I think about Lysa TerKeurst’s Made to Crave I can totally see how God would use that image to poke me as I ran past it.

I can totally lose weight on my own. I can do it in my own strength and I can get to my targets AS LONG as nothing gets in my way. As long as I just keep going and keep my head down then why wouldn’t I manage it?

Problem is that I’m not managing it. My roots aren’t deep enough in the weigh loss journey to keep losing weight when things like special occasions or bad days come along and create wind to continue the tree metaphor.

I wobble and I get shoved around although i can maybe withstand it I can’t really achieve or grow and I end stagnant and STUCK!

What I need is the big stick that anchors me in place. What I need is God. I need His strength to sustain my willpower and decision making skills. I need His wisdom to help me make wise choices and eat the things which are beneficial despite everything being permissible. I need Him to help me see that there will be weeks when I can have made all the right choices but I won’t lose weight but that He is pleased with my discipline and pleased with me for making this walk with Him REGARDLESS of the scales and the tape measure.

There will hopefully come a day where my weight loss journey will become a weight maintaining journey and that it won’t be so much about the relationship with God because He will challenging me on the next thing and my roots will be deeper and more able to keep me stable but for now I need this stick to keep me upright!

I’m ignoring the thought process that the trees roots are going to wreck these peoples lovely drive way when it gets bigger and starts pushing them up! You can’t win them all! 😉

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Listening to His whispers

Are you any good at listening to God? More importantly are you any good at listening to Him and DOING something about what you’ve heard?

I’ve had a number of things niggling me for quite some time about what I do next in life. I am a stay at home mum and I don’t intend to change that. In fact I mostly enjoy it and I try to remind myself that work was monotonous too and that’s not just a home thing!

However I have felt God pushing me to take steps in areas of blogging, creating and possible photography.

I was thinking about dreaming the other week when I was looking at writing down my rule of life for small group. My personality and my giftings lend themselves to being a helper. To getting along side someone who comes up with plans and dreams and then helping them to get it done whether that’s with ideas or just doing as they ask me. I realised as I was thinking about this that the problem with being a helper is that when you try and dream for yourself it’s very hard to do. Firstly because it is hard to believe that your dreams might somehow work and not fear that the promptings you hear from God are just your own thoughts. Secondly it’s incredbily hard work out what steps to actually take to actually make progress and who to bring along with you in that dream you’re not sure will work in the first place!

So with these promptings I’ve spent a lot of time putting myself down.

  • I’m not good enough.
  • I don’t have time.
  • No one would want me to take photos.
  • No one would buy something I create.
  • No one would read the blog post.

But the thoughts keep coming back and somewhere in there I am starting to think more and more that it’s a God nudge.

However I keep coming back to that same problem: I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START WITH ANYTHING EVEN IF I WANT TO!!

Since Friday, what I am finding as I try to open myself more up to God’s prompting and strengthening for weight loss, He also seems to be talking to me more about the other things in life and how to move forwards.

I talked with a friend as we went for a walk who reminded me that although I was comparing my abilities with people around me, God has created me as an individual. I am me and no one else is. A good wet fish round the face to remind me stop comparing myself so much and so harshly.

I listened to on Friday as I was running which talked about the reaction of “I can’t” and how this guys Dad had always responded to him “I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me”. He started the talk asking people to think of what their ‘I can’t’ things are. For me the first thought was weight loss. I can’t lose weight, it’s too hard. Secondly, I was about to try doing hill repeats for the first time in my running to help me be a fitter runner. I’m not sure I can do this. It’s going to hurt. It’s too hard. And then I came on to creativity. I can’t. No one would be interested. I’d fail.
Listening to that talk I felt God talking to me about tasking the risk and taking a step. Jumping into what God is calling me to and to stop saying I can’t. Because I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me.
I came home from my run, which by the way I manage 5 reps instead of the 4 I was aiming for, and sat with Ross as we registered my blog domain (WholeheartedJourney) instead of using the free one I’d been using and didn’t like the name of AND we registered a domain for my creative adventure which now feels more like a reality.

I also did some investigating into Compel Training which I had heard of over a year ago but hadn’t gone back to. Compel is part of Proverbs 31 Ministries which is headed up by Lysa TerKeurst of Made to Crave fame. They teach writers to write better. They occasionally open up their enrolment and it’s currently open and so the obvious thing to do is to sign up for a month and see how I get on.

Finally I listened to a talk this morning by a lady called Crystal Evans at the She Talks conference. She talked about being a Kingdom woman. She talked about how invites into interruptions and invitations in life and how, as writers and speakers and leaders, we can use these interruptions to grow and write and share. She said that “it’s in these broken places that the most beautiful things grow” and as she spoke I just felt God’s prompting that He can use the interruptions that have happened in my life for bigger things and that to write about them is wise. Crystal also repeated the idea that God uses us right where we are. We don’t have to be sorted or write but just open to using our gifts for the glory of God and THAT is what makes you a Kingdom woman.

DO WHAT YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU HAVE

And so I continue to listen. I continue to ask God for His help daily with weight loss hoping that it becomes more of a habit. I continue to hope that I open myself up to God I will hear more of his interruptions and promptings and that I will do what I can with what He has given me knowing that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

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Back to square one

Where’s your head at? That questions always makes me think of Basement Jaxx song and the advert Pringles advert…

But the question is where’s my head at?!

I’ve been having a fight with myself and have been for about 2.5-3 months. The fight is about weight loss and discipline and sticking to what I want to do not doing as Paul says in Romans 7:15:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

I start each day (well most days) with the best of intention to stick to my calories and this week I am going to lose weight and get back on it and be amazing. And then dinner time I’ve eaten something which puts me over my allowance or I get to the evening and I am tired and so I look for something to eat as if somehow that will make me not tired anymore…! The break in America became the month of May not being the end of the world, became fighting to get through June and now nearing the end of July I am just 0.4lb lighter than 2 days before we flew to America four whole months ago.

It’s crazy because it upsets me but I don’t chose to REALLY do something about it which has been the problem for years. It’s not the plan that’s the problem, it’s me.

I’ve debated changing my goal weight, there was nothing really special about 5.5 stone except that it would make me just overweight not obese. I’ve debated just settling where I am but I’m not sure I could find proper peace in that choice. I do not expect the world to just full in place and become happiness and rainbows at my target weight but I feel peaceful that at that weight I will be able to be more at peace with my achievements until I am ready to fight the final 2 stone off – the LOOOOONG term goal!

I’ve tried going back to basics with losing weight and it hasn’t worked. So now I’m going back to different basics. I’ve gone back to reading Lysa TerKeurst’s book Made to Crave and am trying to get a new, more God focused, perspective on the weight loss journey. I’m exhausted from trying to do it in my own strength and feel despair about my lack of progress and so at rock bottom I crawl back to God and ask Him to help me again.

As I go through the questions in the personal reflections I time and time again find that I am saying that my struggle is that making God a part of my every day life is not my habit. That asking Him for help is not my habit. That remember He CAN help is not my habit and find myself frustrated that I don’t really know how to make it habit.

There are positives in this situation. Although I have not lost I have mostly maintained my weight around the same point. A few gains and losses means I have not spiralled and let the weight go back on in frustration at the lack of progress and the disbelief, whether conscious or unconscious, that I am not worth all this time and effort. For those who know that is a MASSIVE change. That spiralling is the reason I spent 6 years on Slimming World gaining and losing the same 1.5 stone without every really making progress.

Also positive is that I recognise the need to change. That sitting in this frustration is not healthy and that I need to get myself to my target to release myself from  it by getting to my target.

It’s time to get more serious about making this journey one where I rely on God and hopefully then make progress to meet my goals BUT more importantly I hopefully will develop my relationship with God opening myself up more to hearing from Him, being more aware of His presence and the feel more of the push from Him to take chance and move forward in all areas of life.

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A divided heart? 

Are you expecting bigger results than your commitment?! 

I totally am! I listened to a talk this evening whilst running about having an undivided heart for God. The talk asked what in my life gave me a divided heart. That got me thinking about my weight loss journey. What is giving me a divided heart at the moment is chocolate! That sounds really shallow but let me explain! 

Because I am walking more and running I am earning more calories and so it is far easier for me to fit excess chocolate into my calorie allowance. The problem is that I’m almost certain that it’s causing me to mentally find it harder and that I am finding it harder to lose weight because I am eating that excess chocolate. I’m within my allowance, I continue to be obedient to what I feel God is calling me to do in losing weight and I continue to be disciplined in sticking to my calorie allowance but the freedom of extra calories means that my obedience and discipline is now half hearted. My heart is divided between the chocolate treat I want to eat and can have and the wanted to lose weight. The discipline is lacking because I CAN have both. 
I am looking for undivided heart results of weight loss with a divided heart to the discipline.

My problem is that I can’t find a way out of this half hearted discipline. 

I suspect part of the problem comes from the fact that for 51 weeks I’ve been living in a world of restriction, obedience and discipline. I see results to that world but that world is hard to stay in for such a long time. It’s almost like half of me is trying to find the way of the strict world by making excuses based on the truth that I have the calories to eat the extra chocolate – thing is just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.

I am hoping this revelation to my divided approach to my weight loss is specially when it comes to the food side of it all, will help me to find some focus and help to pull back towards God and the journey is laid out for me travel. 

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Key words [God loves a trier]

Are there key words that motivate you to do something? 

I’ve recently discovered with my two year old if I use the word try he’s keen to have a go at doing something that’s initially been reluctant to try. Instead of ‘have a go’ leading him to say I can’t do it, ‘have a try and if not we will try together’ seems to motivate him to see if he can. He’s becoming a trier and discovering there is much more he can do than he’s realised before. All because of one word. 

And I am incredibly proud of him every time he tries. I love his awe when he realises he’s managed it. I love how he asks me to help him try when he can’t quite get there. I love my trier!! 

As an aside note I realised as I was writing this that it’s entirely how God sees me and you! God loves a trier. He loves us to take risks and to challenge ourselves to take steps out of our comfort zones for him. He loves us to have a go knowing he’s encouraged us and he loves it when we turn back and ask for some help from him when we find its hard or overwhelming. 

In fact as I write I find this post talking to me in an entirely different way. See I started this post to think about what motivates me, and you. If there were key words someone could say to you get you fired up or key passions?! But actually as I write in finding God speak to me about something I’m struggling with today. 

Today my self esteem is low and my tears are flowing easily. I’m finding myself frustrated and like my weight loss mountain is too high whilst my self esteem is too low. 

But how do I agree with something I’ve just written myself?!? God loves a trier. Simple. 

GOD LOVES A TRIER. 

If I give up on my journey I stop trying because it’s hard and it’s overwhelming. If I keep going shouting at God to help me in my frustration and low self esteem then I’m a trier and he’ll be there with me. 

The past often makes me feel like a failure. If you look back at my history you see how long this journey last and you see I’m worse off now than when I started. It’s hard to not let that infiltrate your heart and cause you to despair. 

But I keep trying because it’s important. It’s important for so many reasons

  • I want to see change in myself and be the best that I can 
  • I want to honour God with what he has given me, my body being a good place to start!
  • I want to be disciplined in my life and my choices
  • I want to be healthier and more able physically 
  • I don’t want my boys to bullied because of how their mum looks (kids are mean!) 
  • I want to see my boys grow up and if for any reason that doesn’t happen I never want them to wonder if I’d taken my weight loss more seriously would life have been different
  • I want to achieve what so often feels I achievable. 
  • I don’t want to feel like I keep failing in this journey 

There so many more reasons which I haven’t  really thought out because this post has taken me a little by surprise. 

I want to be a trier and not a quitter or a failure but man alive do I need Gods help from him and from the community he has placed me in – especially on weeks like this one.