The call that changed everything came on April 7, 2016. My younger brother, my only sibling, had just died suddenly in the home he shared with our parents, due to heart failure. I entered a grief process, unaware of just how much was changing or how long that grief would last.
Soon, I would realize that part of my parents died that day too. I would see them decline rapidly, ultimately moving to live just down the road from us.
Soon, I would begin to see symptoms that would ultimately result in my husband's dementia diagnosis.
Soon, I would feel the gut-punch of realization that I am measurably close to being without any family of origin, or any close extended biological family.
Soon, the childlessness I didn't choose but worked through would again become a fresh wound as I faced the hard realities ahead.
The grief over all of this would become a constant companion. I've gone from being an even-keeled person with few ups and downs to living at some level of sadness all. the. time.
In the past 2 1/2 years, I've learned the language of grief - I can talk about ambiguous grief and anticipatory grief and sibling grief and stages of grief.
None of that knowledge prepares me for the physical pain that I still sometimes get in my stomach.
None of that knowledge holds me when I cry myself to sleep or wake up in tears.
None of that knowledge fixes it.
There are days - lots of them - when I want to scream, "Enough already!" When I'm grieving at this level and for this length of time, why do I also have to have bad days in other areas? Why does my cell phone have to die and I wait for another replacement, feeling more isolated than ever in the meantime? Why does the paperwork for getting assistance for my husband and my parents have to take so long? Why can't the world stop while I deal with all of THIS?
On the good days, I seek God's face and try to learn what He wants me to learn. I keep a list of things that I sense He's teaching me and try to focus on some of those - presence, actions that touch the soul, hope.
On the bad days, I feel so over being in a wrecking season and just scream, "Enough already!"
It was on one of those awful days that He whispered back to me, "I Am."
I knew immediately, in the way that only the Holy Spirit can reveal, that He wasn't just reminding me of His holy name. He was saying to me, "I am enough. In this moment, on this day, with no circumstance changing - I am ALREADY enough."
From that day, I have in my mind the simple challenge when I scream, "Enough Already!" -- that is to remind myself that He is "Enough. Already." Not by fixing everything - but by His presence. Not down the road in some hazy, unknown future - but today, now, in this moment.
Thank You Jesus.
