Back To Writing and Remembering

It's been a while, so I am going to just spill for a bit.

This week, I was reminded that grief is hard.  It hits hard, it is swift, it does not care about its path of destruction.  It creates a path that we can perceive as narrow, but it seems to get wider and wider as we see it from a higher perspective.

I have not been blogging for a while, but I realize that it is important.  It is important for me, and if it can be important for even one other person, that is a good enough reason to continue to me.

My family has moved about 240 miles east of where we were when I last wrote.  I have ended about 12 years of employment in churches and ministry.  I am now in the construction and remodeling business.  I have been pretty focused on finding a normal with our new situation and our new life.
That is the quickest update I can give, I am sure that there will be more as more blogs come.

When you are in the ministry long enough, you wind up helping kids and families through times that are really awful.  This past weekend, one family from my early years of ministry, unexpectedly lost their father and husband.  I only met him a few times, but I knew the family well. 

On Sunday I heard about him, and by Sunday night, I found myself in their kitchen, at their table, reliving moments of grief, pain, laughs, and love.  This is a family that is strong, they love hard, and they recognize that their father was an incredible human being.  His legacy is strong. 

I watched grief from the beginning.  I saw the raw pain. 

I tried to remember my own.  I have realized that instead of remembering every part of every day, I barely remember things over the course of a few weeks.  It is such a blur.  I think I prefer it that way.  I know that the days were there, and I know that things happened.  It has become hard for me to put a timeline to the events.  Many of my memories don't make sense. 

I often feel guilt over my memory not being very good, but I remember the most important parts.  I remember the love that I felt, I remember that people cared for my family when I couldn't.  I was in a place where I could barely care for me let alone everyone else.  Our families kept us steady, our families kept us afloat, our families kept us fed and loved.  Thank you. 

It is one of my passions to help those who are grieving.  I do this through training and racing.  I also found great solace in a kitchen table with a family that I have loved for a long time.  I hope that this blog also brings someone some peace. 

Also, as a side note, I will be more organized into the future.  I will not usually going to be so scatter-brained, but there is a whole bunch of blog stuff floating around in my head.  So this one was kind of a dumping ground of what came out.