Be Still

After David died, I heard the hymn; “Be Still and Know that I am God” This statement appears as a verse in Psalm 46:10.

How can I be still when my flesh and blood is in the grave? How can I be still when I lost my most precious gift? How can I be still when part of me died? How can I be still when nothing makes sense? How can I be still when my will is broken? How can I be still when I feel the way I do? How can I be still when I am tormented? How can I be still when my whole being is shook? How can I be still when everything around me has changed? I am in a state of flux. I am in a state of change. Everything changed when my son died. The whole world is no longer the same. I am not the same. I will never be the same. The way I think is different. The way I respond to people is different. I just pray that the good that is promised from this entire calamity will surface soon as I cannot take it anymore. The suffering due to this loss is unimaginable and even indescribable. The pain that grips my soul is mixed with fear and despair.

I feel breathless at times.

People who have suffered

 

I am discovering that the people who have suffered are the ones who speak the right words and give the very advice that I am longing for. They had to pay a price that made them so skillful in binding my wounds and drying my tears.

Affliction!! Is it for our good?

I have been going through my diary and located the following excerpt.

Every time that I read about affliction it sounds that it is for our good. It sounds that we need to be tested so that we can grow to be stronger and that our faith will also be strengthened. I don’t mind being tested if the testing were not so final. So what if I become stronger? What if I endure, and out of this suffering come beauty? What if I can survive and be able to help others? Is this worth the loss of my son? I do not think so. I would rather have him than go through the fiery furnace and come out like gold. I would rather be a weak person of no value than to lose David. I do not look at this loss as a test of my faith. I look at it as a horrible thing that happened to me and to David. I look at it as a loss that can never be replaced.

More Diary Notes

This was written in my early days of grief in 2004

I am really despondent today and have some anger. I can’t imagine living like this till the day I die. It has been such a struggle and challenge. I am tired of pretending and philosophizing. It does not work. It is telling me that I can make it if I think this way or think of the eternal when everything that surrounds me is temporal and I live in a tangible world and I have to think of the unseen. I am really all confused and full of doubt. Faith is based on the unseen. It is so easy for someone who has not suffered such a loss to judge my faith and it has been judged many a time. Only the Lord knows my heart and knows how much I am hurting. I feel like a knife is cutting my heart out at times. Today is no good. The world around me is full of life and yet I feel dead on the inside. I want David to see the flowers that I am seeing and I want him to participate in this life. I am so void. I am so empty and so lonely and so messed up at this moment. This is not the way one must live. I am so stupid to deprive myself of the joy of this life knowing full well that there is nothing that I can do to change the unchangeable and yet I continue to feel sad. I really cannot change how I feel in an instant. It is not magic. It is a process of accepting and not accepting what happened until it sinks into my brain that life could be good again. Maybe someday I will feel like myself again. Yet I know that my grief will never be lost.