Mourning into Dancing

In two days I will reach the third anniversary of my husband’s suicide.  It boggles my mind that for three entire years, I have woken up, had coffee, and survived another day without touching him or talking to him or feeling the warmth of his love.  Each year as this day comes lurking about; I always sense it over my shoulder.  It’s like a big hulking thing, and each year, once a year, it creates a shadow so big it makes the whole day dark.  Each February I feel it coming, and I sense the coldness, and I feel the days growing shorter, and my heart getting sadder, and then the day is here, and I am enveloped into darkness of the shadow of my grief again.

I will probably spend the day doing what I have done the previous two years; stay in bed.  In a past life I would have scolded myself that this was an incredibly unconstructive way to spend a Tuesday, and how I should rouse myself and make a difference somehow.  That person was much more driven, and wholly lacking in deep pain, bless her heart.  This person, this broken woman, this one who thinks that this sucks so bad, and that it really hurts, still, and the one that is really so very tired of crying; this person understands the value of allowing things to hurt.  

It’s not about wallowing or giving up or giving in or any of those things which all somehow sound like defeat.  It’s about giving me a minute.  It’s about understanding that this one day a year, each year, I can commemorate the very worst day of my life.  It’s about it being ok, for just that one day, at least, to really feel that pain.  Some things hurt because they should.

The following day, I will get up, and I will shower, and drink coffee, and commence yet another year of living without Storm and his amazing love.  But this day, this one day, I will be hiding under the covers, wishing the world would go away. 

There’s a song that I enjoy that we sing at church occasionally on a Sabbath.  I remember the first time I heard the lyrics, I just stood in the crowd and cried.  

It goes like this:

“You will turn my mourning into dancing,
You will trade my sackcloth for your joy,
So I will sing your praise forever,
I will not be silent anymore…
I will not be silent anymore…”

The promise of this song made my heart sing that first time I heard it.  It felt like a message straight to my heart.  At that moment in my life I was so overwhelmed with grief it seemed like I could barely breathe.   It was impossible for me to even stop crying for a single hour, let alone to dance with joy. 

These words come from a scripture, Psalm 30:11, and it should say you HAVE turned my mourning into dancing, but that’s not the case with me just yet.  I sing it my way, to make it true, and I do believe it’s true; or at least, I live with the hope that it is. 

This scripture, and the song we sing of it, is my promise and my hope to come.  I don’t think a day will ever come when I will not notice that Storm’s “deathaversary” is rolling around again, but I do hope that some day it won’t feel like this.  

I also hope that someday, Yehovah WILL turn my mourning into dancing.  I don’t know what that looks like for me, exactly.  I can’t dance.  I have many gifts, and I am grateful for each of them, but physical dexterity is not one of them.  I occasionally will indulge in Hebrew dancing, if there’s a big enough crowd, but mostly I just don’t.  

Hebrew type of folks often talk about “restoration.”  I don’t know what that looks like for me, either.  I think, someday, I would like to feel, “restored,” but how does that happen?  How will I even recognize it?  Is it possible for me to love like that again?  Do I even deserve to have the opportunity?  Just answering my own question; probably not so much.  

I’m not sure about marriage.  It doesn’t seem to be something I’m very good at, frankly, and so probably that would not be a good choice for me.  So if not marriage, than what?  Who am I if I am not “Mrs. Treasure?”  What could possibly restore me to being Storm’s honored wife, which I miss so much, and which seems more like a fairy tale each passing year?  Still, I think somehow “restoration” and “trading sackcloth for joy;” sound like they should be the same thing.

In the midst of this murky emotional state, I am deeply grateful for the gifts my Father in heaven so richly bestows into my life.  It seems heinous to feel so terrible amidst such abundance and love.  I have never been a church woman, in the entirety of my walk of faith.  It seems I could never find one that fit.   I have been, in a sense, “set apart.”  Yet, here in the years of my greatest need, my Father has planted me among a body of people who have, largely without even realizing, helped me to find my footing and opened up a door of warmth and love that has sustained me to begin to heal. 

I have probably covered this ground before, but it bears repeating.  The first time, I didn’t intend to stay.  It was one week and one day after Storm died, and I intended to leave after seeking prayer.  A lovely future friend, an ambassador of Yahovah, found me and simply insisted I stay for lunch.  That first week I came for prayer, stayed for the music and message, and ate the first really good meal I’d had in more than a week.  Heading home, I told myself I wasn’t going back.  Yet there I was the next week and the next week, literally trembling in fear as I tried to sneak in the door, and each week these wonderful folks fed me spiritually, emotionally, and physically, and they probably didn’t even know they were doing it.

 I walked alone for so many years, I think I still feel outside even when I am inside.  I find myself looking around when I am there and realizing how many faces I know, how many names I can put with them, and I have at least one memory of most of them being kind to me when I was so broken it hurt to speak.  I still can spend most of the day there not talking to anyone, really, but that’s because I choose to.  In a church full of people who know my name, I can certainly find someone to talk to.  The thing is; I don’t have to talk to them to see their love for me.  I know these people love me.  They show it to me by making coffee and setting up the food and then cleaning up.  They show me by singing the songs and preaching the sermons and wiping the floors.  They show me by remembering my name, introducing me to their loved ones, and sharing their troubles with me.  They show me by every good work they do; every week.  Yeshua said they will know us by our love for one another.  Indeed.

 

Perhaps “restoration” just means that I won’t feel the urge to cry nearly all the time, even when I am feeling joy.  Perhaps it means that I will not get this stab of pain in my chest whenever I see married peoples acting like married peoples.    I hope it means that I won’t feel this creeping shadow coming up every year.  I would dearly love to trade my sackcloth for joy.   Whatever it means, I look forward to it, because this never stops sucking.  Perhaps it means I could love again; that maybe someday, someone might actually love me again.

As we say each week; May Yahovah bless you and keep you, may Yahovah make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, may Yahovah lift his countenance upon you and give you shalom/peace.  Amen.”

Thank you for reading.