transition

it’s begun.
slowly, very slowly the pain has started to ease into something else.
God always heals our hearts.

I haven’t written anything, even in my own journal, which is very unusual for me, for a week now. I just haven’t felt like there were words…and I needed to just be alone with my brain long enough to figure out where my life was going to go from here.

This past week has been full of trying, stretching, growing…in the kind of way you always hope you never have to know about but when it’s done, and it’s happened, you can start to realize that you’ve been changed.

My husband had to go back to work. Silly as it sounds, I thought it would kill me. I’m 24, I know you have to work to live life, but I wanted him to stay in bed with me that morning more than I wanted to breathe. Well, an hour of crying, and begging God to help me later, I did survived. And man have I grown.
Grown in that I’m a big girl – independence - I can do it - you gotta get out of bed now kinda way.
It was a small step. But a step in the right direction at least… 

Thanksgiving has somehow magically transitioned into full fledged Christmas…
normally, I live for this. My whole life I could not wait for the decorations to go up, and the music to change on the radio. 
For a split moment yesterday the sun was glaring off the snow and shining so brightly into my kitchen, and I felt it. The spark, the excitement of winter, and snow, and Christmas. I know this holiday, like the last, will come with some feelings of disappointment. But I refuse to let it be ruined. A good friend showed up at my door yesterday, and said to me “ I really think this is just the beginning of your story”… and I think she’s right. I’ve been feeling like Jude’s story is over now, where am I supposed to go from here.

Last night I figured out exactly where to go from here…

Romans 8:18-26

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

Paul may very well have had me in mind when he wrote that, oh you know, a thousand or so years before I was born. I spent a half hour last night on the internet looking it up in different bible translations. He compares the world waiting for Jesus to come again, to a pregnancy. How as you mark the weeks off the calendar, and your due date gets closer, your excitement grows. And how even though you try, nothing could prepare you for the joy that is coming on that day.

“our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed”
That’s where this transition will take me. I won’t “get over” losing my baby. I certainly will never be the same. But our suffering now, is not even worth comparing to what kind of joy is coming. 
Our love for Jude will continue to teach us things we never would have learned with out him.  While his “earthly story” may have ended that day, the story of his life, and his love will never end.

“tis the season to be jolly”… tis what I intend to do.