Before I go...

I've been thinking about traveling to Israel and the emotional toll that is likely to take, and I've been thinking about writing a blog about it for a while.  Sort of an emotional shower before I go, I suppose.  A good mental scrubbing.

A subtle shift has happened inside of me, with the progress of my grief.  I don't buy into the "stage of grief" model for a few reasons.  While I do think there are stages, it seems that each  individual is unique, and there are millions of possibilities for what those "stages" might be, how long they might last, and what might be next.   I think of it more like healing, a sort of injury, which takes place in it's own time in each person, and generally leaves some sort of scar.  Perhaps I've reached a new point of healing.

I see that when we lose someone it makes a sort of wound.  Generally, a bleeding, gaping wound.  The Bible says that when a couple marries, they become one.  When one half of one dies, that leaves a pretty big hole behind.  Eventually, this begins to heal.  It doesn't feel like it at first.  There's just this aching hurt inside of us.  But like all wounds, it does start to heal, and we begin to feel that healing.  Every now and again, something makes you realize that you actually are progressing in the healing.

That healing point seems to be that the pining, as in, "I'm "pining away" for him," is diminishing.  Not that it's gone, exactly.  Not always, at least.  But it's STARTING to be gone.  That's the thing.  There are still times when I miss him so much it feels like an acute pain inside me, like the burning, stabbing need that I felt immediately after his death.  But not all the time, now.  Not every day.  As I move through time toward this trip, I realize that much of the time the excitement of the anticipation and the thoughts of my time there fill my heart and my mind so completely that I am unable to think of much else.

It is more than just the replacement therapy of the trip.  It's a sense of change inside of me.  Like when you've hurt your leg or ankle; it's that moment you realize that you can stand on it again.  Or after an illness, of it finally passing, and the symptoms easing, so you can rest.  That feeling of the fever breaking.  That's how it's feeling.

It's a good time for it.  19 months in, I am getting tired of dragging this chain behind me, this rattling mess of grief.  I have been tired of the tears for so long I can't express it, but it's more than just tears.  It's the sense that there is always this heartbreak that pulls me down.  This terrible tragedy.  It's depressing, frankly, and it's not the life I ever wanted to live.  

It's also something that weighs down my future.  It's a story that I must tell any future men that I know.  It's a story that I must tell my future friends and future acquaintances.  It's something that will always be on me, like an invisible tattoo that no one can actually see yet still generates conversation.  It's not that I mind talking about it, exactly.  It's that I mind having it to talk about to begin with.

My friend, Glenda, who amazes me, shared with me that this time I am visiting Israel is a time of repentance; the month of Elul leading up to Yom Kippur.  It's fitting.  I am turning away, repenting of my past life, being healed to walk into the future of my new life.

May my God, Yahweh, open up my heart to what is ahead.  May he remove my heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh.  May he bring me shalom.