What We're Learning

As the year has gone by since we've lost Caden, I think back on so very many things that have happened over this year. Grief is so very strange sometimes. It has no time limit, and it doesn't give any warning as to when the emotions will come flooding by.

The last 3 months of 2008 were extremely hard for us both. While I can only share bits of what Tom is dealing with, I can share a lot of what has gone through my mind. I felt like life was moving on without me. I didn't really even know what my purpose was anymore. We both had changed so much from within, that things were starting to be different for us on the outside too. Events that once brought us so much happiness, now are just events. Things that used to matter just don't seem so important anymore. Like for example, the holidays. I basically just don't really like the holidays. Everyone is running around and trying to find gifts for members of their families with money that they could use on something else, and to me at least, I just see a lot of stress in not only myself and my family, but in my friends and others around me. As a kid, the holidays were a time to be off school and hang out with my family, and the gifts were nice too, but the gift giving part of the holidays just doesn't do it for me anymore. I would rather play cards with my parents and talk about things that really matter and spend quality time rather than stressing out about presents.

So as the new year approached, we started to notice that our lives were heading in directions that we weren't familiar with. We decided to start finding a new church. That was an extremely tough decision. For one, we have so many friends at our old church that we care about so much, and we felt like that was a place of connection. In the last year, we saw that God was taking us in a new direction where He was wanting us to rely on Him and Him alone. We had changed so much as far as our thoughts and perceptions went, that we just needed a fresh start to be the "new" Tom & Mira. I personally fought that so hard. I was resistant to changing anything, I felt like my life had changed enough without having to find a new place to worship and plug ourselves into. It seemed like the more that I fought and tried to be back to my "old" self, the harder things got for me. I remember hearing things from friends with the best of intentions saying that they wished that I could do things like I used to, or that they hoped that I would find myself again, or even that they wanted me to have joy again. As well meaning as all of my friends were, hearing some of that only made me feel like more of a failure. Not only could I not be the "old" Mira anymore, but I wasn't able to be the "new" Mira very well either. I just couldn't win. So I would try to be back to the "old" Mira, only to cry b/c I just couldn't do it. Too much has happened to just forget and be the same person that I was before. That got both Tom and I to thinking that we just needed a fresh start to be us. Whoever that is.

Right now we are still searching for a new church, and everywhere that we have gone to, God has definitely shown us Himself there. I guess that maybe we became too comfortable with life that God had to shake us up and totally change things for us to see him completely.

Journeying through loss, is not easy. Getting through last year definitely was a milestone and was needed. I will have so many days of great revelations and God show me so much more about himself and about what kind of new person I want to be, that I sometimes just can't even put it into words. I have had more peace in the last 2 months than I ever thought that I would have again. I have opened up to more people than I ever thought would even care about my situations, and I have made more new friendships that have been such a comfort to me over the past year. While I do still get sad when I hear a familar song that touches my heart, or when I hear about a friend who's child is going through cancer treatments, or when God just speaks to me through the most unusual of circumstances, or when past friendships just don't even acknowledge our loss or say Caden's name, I am reminded that God does care about me and that He has made me a more compassionate, giving, and peaceful person than I ever imagined possible. That doesn't mean things are going to go ok all the time, but it means that when they aren't, God will sit & cry with me. I also now know that a few friends will do that too. What a comforting thought to know that I will never have to face life (whatever it throws at me) alone.

Until next time,
Tom & Mira