Finding Peace

 Last night, I got a very important realization: "No matter how many times you lose loved ones, you can never get used the feeling of loss. Never".

I write this from personal experience. I lost 2 members of my immediate family in 2001 and 2007 and though it felt like the world had come to an end especially in '07, I still found the strength in Christ (finally) to move on.

I have had dear people to me die at different stages in  my life and taken it in good faith, but nothing in this world prepared me for the news I heard last night. I lost two very dear people to me (husband and wife) on Monday. Didn't hear about it till yesterday. Initially, I couldn't feel anything (guess that happens when you are too familiar with pain and loss), but about a few seconds later, my brain registered what it heard and then the tears came. The tears came not because I just realized they were gone; but because I looked back on the years I spent with this wonderful couple. I remember clearly learning how to knit from this woman and she knit my first ever blue sweater. I was probably about 8 when she knit that sweater and I'm not sure I dropped that sweater any time before I was 13. I remember the easy going nature of the man and how he teased me last December saying I was a big girl now. Most especially, I remember them in 2001. They were there for my family through our period of loss. I remember that vividly.

This post though, is not about how I cried or what made me cry; this is about finding peace. Now, I've dealt with grief and loss in different ways; tears, anger, bottled-up feelings, contempt, guilt, determination, denial, severing ties with God, sickness, and the list goes on and on, but I will like to talk about being angry/cutting ties with God.

My normal human reaction yesterday after crying would have been "but God, why?". I'm sure He was probably even expecting that question from me, thankfully though, it didn't come and it has still not come. 2007 was by far the greatest loss for me out of all the ones I can count and that year, I decided I had taken enough from a God who allows the good people in the world to die and allowed the bad ones stay. So, coupled with a really messed up way of grieving (bottled up feelings), I cut ties with God. Don't get me wrong; I didn't stop going to church or even dancing during praises, but my heart was not with God. I moved on to a place where I made decisions myself and couldn't relate with God as I was supposed to. It was a very terrible period for me. A very difficult place to be. I was nasty, was rude, couldn't concentrate and had the worst attitude ever. I didn't care though, because I felt like I was getting back at God for what He had done to me.

The turning point wasn't a "fall down and die" moment of deliverance from whatever was tormenting me; it was just a realization that I'm not doing God a favour by choosing to serve or love him but rather I'm doing myself a huge benefit. I might be wrong, but I've chosen to see God as the God that "blesses and adds no sorrow" (my Bible says so) and accept the fact that there are lots of things we will never understand in the flesh no matter how or accurate our knowledge of God is. He still has that superiority over us and isn't that what makes Him God? I have examples from the Bible and more to tell me that keeping away from the God who gives me life everyday is like taking a knife and intentionally ripping it through my heart every day; feeling the intense pain, but not dying.

I have therefore made my peace with loss and God and I have chosen to see God as the GIVER and not the TAKER of life. Any other view cannot hold water with me as far as life is concerned. I may not understand why good  people die; I know that I don't need to any more.

I might be wrong,and there might be explanations that I do not know, but if God wishes that I know them while still on this earth, then that's entirely up to Him. Sounds like taking the easy way out? Well, at least it saves me the greater loss!