Bad News (Again)
March 15, 2016 § 1 Comment
When the bad news comes it seems to swirl around you, so thickly at first that you can almost feel the wind of it, the cold, and the rest of the world feels very outside as you sit in that circle of the white silent storm and try to comprehend.
Sometimes you peer through to the outside world at what was once normal. Sometimes you imagine yourself there. But very often all you can manage is to huddle in place, sometimes by yourself, sometimes with the others who have found themselves there with you. You find each others’ hands. You try to warm them.
All the loving people outside the circle want to reach toward you. This is so kind and wonderful of them but also, on your hard days, too much to ask. Just let me feel hateful and angry and alone! Don’t try gentle away the bitterness that is protecting me and do NOT tell me God is Good or (even worse) to Trust in His Sovereign Will (even if we don’t understand it – of course we don’t understand it, bc what is happening right now SUCKS and HURTS and why would You let that be okay to happen to children You supposedly love?).
How can anyone know where you are right this moment? Your own emotions are so everywhere that you can go from laughing to weeping to fury in moments. The emotions don’t do any good of course. They don’t change a thing.
You want to be your old self, to try to be funny, to swing your ponytail when you walk, to watch happiness come into people’s faces when they see you, rather than the recognition of One In Need of A Hug (still you take the hug and almost always gladly).
The new and terrible news means that everything is going to change, perhaps slowly, perhaps suddenly, perhaps kind of both. You know this from the sad things of before. You dread it and yet part of you wants to drag it towards you, because everything must be torn apart and made over, and it’s going to hurt; hurry on up so that it gets over with and life figures out some sort of normal again. Acceptance vs. resistance are fighting a pretty fine battle in your mind/spirit/heart/soul/whatever you want to call it.
Still. When you can draw back from that battle – or can push off the dullness of resignation that you’ve pulled like a blanket over your whole body so that you can sleep – and you look at oh this aching creation, you know that puppies will still wriggle and woo you into feeling an old joy. So will babies, even if they still are not your own. So will the smell of horses and hay, the slant of afternoon sun while you lie in the grass. Coffee, so blessed on cool mornings in a favorite mug. You will still thrill in the deep rumbling rain and the water running off the leaves of the trees. These things have done it before – tricked you, reminded you, charmed you into wanting to keep living with gladness despite everything, after all.
And that table of laughing friends – the ones you know have grace enough to walk with you, even when you might offend them on occasion with your kaleidoscope of reactions to this Horrid, Terrible News – there is comfort in knowing that their table will still hold a place for you.
Kinds of Honey 
My heart is sad and heavy for you, friend. Please know I’m just a message away if you need me for anything or if you just need to rant the yuck. I will be praying and thinking of you. I’m so terribly sorry you are in pain.