The next steps.

And so we continue to walk the path no one ever wants to go.

We avoid grief.  We run from it.  We hope it doesn't knock on our door.  But it does.  Every man is appointed a day to leave this world, and hopefully, to cross over to Heaven.

As I have said, grief is a personal experience.  There is no badge of honor because you conducted yourself in such and such a manner.  It does not diminish your walk with the Lord, if you know Him, because you have questions, or that you have so much anger that you don't know what to do with it, or that you fall crumpled to the floor, or need to pull off the road because you are having a panic attack, and wondering where in the world you can put your pain.

Grief is messy, and as we walk through this time together, I would ask you for grace when you read these entries, as they will likely not be laid out in a nice orderly fashion.  Over time, we experience many emotions: hurt, anger, denial, depression, and acceptance, but they are not sequential.  Any of them can crop up at any given time, and usually in a very unexpected way.  Sometimes they come in waves, taking your breath away, and at other times, there are large stretches of time that you almost forget.

Remember when I said that, how you walk through your pain does not diminish your walk with the Lord? It really doesn't.  Because He is Bigger than your pain, He is Bigger than your grief, and His shoulders are more than big enough to carry your burdens, even if you cannot see Him, or feel Him, or hear Him (this was a surprise to me, as I expected that He would speak softly to my heart, but the thing is, He didn't- He waits because the pain at the time screams louder than our ability to hear Him).  And then we gain yet another nugget of Truth - it was never about my ability to carry myself, or work  it out by myself, or conduct myself in a manner worthy of His calling.  It has been totally about His ability to protect me, to love me, and to keep me.  Because you see, at the end of the day, even in my darkest hours, He really is The Keeper of My Heart.