Dear friend,
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
I keep thinking about the fall after my grandmother died, when I still set two coffee cups out of habit before I caught myself. Nobody warns you the body keeps doing the old math for months after the numbers change. I'm not writing today to hand you anything tidy. I just want to say the word out loud so you don't have to be the one who names it first. You are grieving a loss. That's the whole sentence. It doesn't need a lesson stapled to the end of it.
I read Ecclesiastes 3 again this week, the part about a time to weep. Not a time to weep quickly, or weep correctly, or weep and then explain what you learned. Just a time to weep, sitting right next to a time to laugh like they're equally legitimate uses of a life. I don't think the writer was in a hurry for either one to end.
I'm not asking you to feel anything specific tonight. I just keep wondering where the loss is sitting in your body right now, if that's a question you can even answer?
A prayer
God, she is carrying a loss that has no deadline for healing. Be near the actual weight of it tonight, not the version she thinks she should feel instead. Amen.