Just When You Think Your Doing Better

Grief is funny that way, just when you think you are over the mountain you are suddenly faced with an emotion you had no idea was there. Maybe not that it was not there, but that it couldn't feel any worse. Guess what, it does! I went through April thinking I was coming out of the fog only to realize that the guy who caused us all this pain, is walking free as I write this!
And not to mention that I have to do "Mother's Day" with a smile on my face as though it is some kind of great day. Yes, it is a day where I can appreciate the most precious girl in the whole world, my little sissy bug! But Mother's Day for me is a day where not only I remember the day I lost my child, the emptiness that my soul feels without him here with me and not to mention the fact that the people who have moved on with their lives have conveniently forgotten why I may be upset on this day. Go figure!
And it only gets better! Mother's Day also marks for our family the last "holiday" we spent with Hunter. Because one week from today is the anniversary of his death. Four years, i cant believe it has been that long. It feels just like yesterday sometimes, and other times it feels like forever!
I worry about things that most of us don't think about when our child is well and alive. Like what their voice sounded like when they first started talking or what it really like to hold them close and rock them to sleep. Things like that I am losing as the years pass, I feel forgetting what he looked like when he was laughing and playing. I fear that I will forget to think about him first thing in the morning when I wake and last thing at night. What if that happens? What then? Those fears take me to his photos but I can not stay there long at all, because(as a friend said) I see myself standing on the edge of this black hole that if I stare at those photos too long or think to intently about him I will be sucked into a place that I wont come back from.
God always taps me on the shoulder and makes me look back at what I need to focus on, but it is always there everyday. They don't teach this stuff in books when you are becoming a shrink or councilor or whatever your name for it is. Grief work is completely different for everyone. It looks different, it feels different no two people grieve the same, it is completely and totally unknown except to the one who is doing grief. Its like those diets say it is not temporary it is a lifestyle change. It is true. Everything changes in that moment that your child dies.
Nothing is ever the same, you, your family, your friends, nothing is the same. You look at life with a new filter a new perspective. Things that once matter don't matter anymore. You find out who you matter to really quickly and some how you manage to make it through each day without getting to close to the edge of the black hole that is always within sight.
And on days that you think your going to fall in God is always there to pull you back. But I must say especially in the last year I feel like that passage in the Bible that talks about trials in James 1:2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

I must be lacking a whole heck of a lot, cause buddy I have been tested on every angle of my life!
It gets frustrating sometimes for me, because I think that I am so selfish that I would dare want one more single solitary thing from God as if He owes me something! Thank goodness His word is here to give me a wake up call to get over myself and live for Him.
Not that it is at all easy, but it does help to soften the blow a little when I remember what He did for me, just silly ole me. Wow, how how amazing is that! Although I have days where I am screaming and throwing a tantrum that I don't want to grow up and be "mature". He gently shows me something important that He needs to refine in me and through all of that I am grateful.