A New Heart for Valentine's Day...

You know that this blog is about grief, right? It is about the process of finding life again...and about the journey to a reality you can live with once again. My other blogs urban abbess and desert abbess are about sustaining life in an urban setting (to repair us for the apocalyse) and the desert abbess (to train us for the life of the cross); then there is tALITHA CUM, which is my life of despair moving toward wholeness, I pray. Today describing "how I am doing" I scrambled to find a meaningful metaphor that would keep me from crying but be truthful in the details. I scanned the horizon of my experience these last few months and the only thing I could see was a barren desert with a long winding road down the middle. No landscape, no flowers, no wildlife,just monotony and an endless series of hills that had to be climbed and put behind oneself. Not very exciting. But not stress free either. Because for all of its monochromatic hues, it was scary too. Just being on a road toward a destiny you know not, is scary. I repeatedly turn back looking for my normal life. Then I discover its gone. There is no normal to go back to. I walked into Hans' office this morning with the clear goal of getting him out of his desk chair and going for breakfast someplace, wanting to hear his voice again. But when I walked in, it was my own office I was looking at. I didn't open the closet door where all his clothes still hang and rest. Nope...its a whole new world and I am on this journey alone. How can any of this bring glory to God? I don't know. I only know that it is a desparate dark and lonely road, and I am traveling it with a silent companion who never speaks to me anymore. Just walks along side of me in a quiet softness. I have walked with Him too long to ever think He has abandoned me, but at the same time, it feels like it. My feelings will not however, undermine or erode my faith in Him. I will walk this road, step by step, but I am not happy about it at all. My spiritual mentor asks of me to look for something lovely today, some place that I stopped (in the spirit) and enjoyed myself and was refreshed. These moments are so hard to find. It is a really a stretch to find...there are no desert blooms that I can pick on this God-forsaken road. It occurred to me at some point today, that I am on the cross. There were a few this week. All of them deeply personal but highly revealing. All clearly point to the loss of love that I have experienced in this year. I promised one of my clients that she would get a new heart for Valentine's Day to replace her broken one. I pray that for myself as well.