It's not a mask...it's survival

We are all hanging in there, in the wake of Michael's death. We are, the best we know how, leaning into the love of God and moving forward through the storm. Because we are making such a concerted effort to meet life head-on and walk in grace (a.k.a. not vomiting our pain all over innocent bystanders) we look normal to other people. We seem just fine, most of the time.

Underneath, though, is a whole different story.

It's not a mask we wear, pretending to be okay.
It's not that we're avoiding the reality of what's going on.
We are not faking or being inauthentic.

This is gut-deep survival.

This is the only way we know to be able to carry on with life while our hearts lie bleeding on the floor.

Life, as I have said before, goes relentlessly on. No matter how brokenhearted a person may be, life demands that they keep doing the normal life things.

How? How can we possibly carry on with the mundane tasks of daily life? How can our kids carry on with work and school and other commitments, when their hearts are breaking, repeatedly breaking? They have to. We have to.

How?

One: lean hard into the arms of Jesus.
Two: wear a face of normalcy and put one foot in front of the other

The first is Life itself. That inner wellspring of love and comfort and help is the main reason any of us is sane and breathing and remotely okay.

The second is purely survival, and purely necessary.

There are other options, of course. In the face of such sudden, tragic loss, going completely to pieces is a highly reasonable response. This pain is enough to drive a person insane. It really is. Numbing the pain away with a variety of substances is also completely understandable. The pain is just unreal. I "get" in a way I never did before why people bury their pain with alcohol or drugs. The pain is exhausting and relentless. It pounds at you every moment of every day, whether you are thinking about it or not. It never stops.

Both of those roads, though, bring terrible consequences. They lead to places of more brokenness, more loss.

The alternative? Grab hard onto the hand of Jesus, lift your head, stick out your chin, and walk straight into the face of the wind.

This is the only way we saw to come through this with some semblance of wholeness, and with our lives and our family intact. By the grace of God, in the deepest sense, we are doing this hard, hard thing together, as a family.

To anyone who is not right up close to us, we seem pretty normal. We talk and laugh and listen and care and do the things that need to be done. We carry on.

It is not an act. It is real.

But the other truth is also real- that behind this face of normalcy is a deep well of sadness and loss. Sometimes, the waves of pain grow smaller and quieter and fall into the background. Sometimes, they rise up and knock us flat without warning. Every day is fraught with peril, like a grassy meadow full of forgotten land-mines. We never know when the next step will trigger an explosion that leaves us bleeding and breathless.

Life does not leave a lot of room for that; not much time for catching our breath after one of the big hits. Thankfully, God has given each of us, in some of those hardest moments, a little space, and the kindness of people who help carry the load for a few steps.

When I hear the stories of how people have loved on our kids and helped them when they struggle, my heart overflows with gratitude. That means the absolute world to me.

Oh, and a critical #3 on this road to survival: Get help. For heaven's sake, get the help you need! Find a good counselor, a grief support group, an online group of others walking the same hard road. We all, every one of us, need real help to make it through this. We do talk with one another about the real things of our grief, but it also helps, tremendously, to talk to someone who does not have a personal emotional investment in what you say, and in every shift of your feelings. There is no shame in seeking help; it is not a sign of weakness. It is pure common sense, and necessary for survival and for healing.

Have grace for yourself. Let yourself be where you are, feeling what you feel.

One of the most important things I have learned in the eight months we've been on this hard journey is to have deep grace for others, and for how they are dealing with their own hard things. We are all, every one of us humans, just doing the best we know how. We should have so much grace for each other. One of the worst things to do to someone in pain is to imply that they are somehow failing at grief; that they are doing loss or suffering the wrong way. How on earth does that help?

In the past, I might have been that person. I have a tendency to give off the message of, "you're doing it wrong" to the people closest to me. It's not nice. I'm working hard to learn better ways. I am having a stiff education on having grace for myself and extending it to others.

I love that meme that has gone around the internet in various forms; the one that says, "You never know what someone is going through, so be kind...always." I have also seen a quote attributed to Socrates, which is probably the root of the modern variations. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

It's so true. We never know what private pain there is behind someone else's facade of "normal."  What if we all just assumed that every other person is carrying a hidden hurt of some kind, and extended grace and kindness to one another, all the time? What a difference that would make.