Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Give Time A Chance

I had a long talk with an old friend yesterday. Someone who has seen her share of sorrows. She told me sometimes there are no answers. No way to make sense of tragedies, of life's circumstances. Somehow I heard her, believed her and my resistance faded. Tonight I prayed one of Anne Lamott's prayers, "help me, help me, help me."

When I last saw my grief counsellor and was feeling angst about not knowing how this experience of cancer has changed me he said, "you are in the process of integrating that experience into who you are now. It takes time." My friend commented today that time itself was a cross. That to be able to give time a chance to do its work was hard.

I noticed when this long time friend commented that I seemed to be doing good and preceded her words with, 'don't get mad at me' that I still have some resistance to admitting it. It comes from feeling like I am being disloyal to or diminishing the journey to just be happy. But really, she's right, I am doing good.

3 comments:

Grace-WorkinProgress said...

Wow there is so much in this short post. What the counselor said merging something new good or bad into who you are now, this does take time and time being a cross.

I have had, in my mind, great loss and like you I felt that by moving on it dimished the event and person. I didn't want to hide the fact that I was forever changed. I wanted people to know not to expect the person I was to be there any more.

Your words made me see why I was so sad for so long. Thank you.

Hope said...

You're welcome, Grace. I can relate to everything you said in your comment.

Rebekah Grace said...

Exhaling deeply with these words of yours, Hope!