Circles ... of Healing and Grief

 

I took another walk.

On this one path is trees with no leaves,

trees with golden orange leaves

and trees still with green leaves. 

I really like the little tree with the flame 

coloured leaves. 

I found myself thinking, 

we all have our own time and timeline,

there is just not one time for everyone.

***

Well, I am just trying to do 

my new basic routine...

***

Less than a week in!

***

I did a little bit of work on my writing project.

I revisited some writing that had to do with my 

memory loss and such,

but it was too painful to read.

So my heart is still tender from it.

And I am having to come to terms with 

how sick I was, not only with fear and PTSD

but just not well spiritually or, I don't know how to say it,

it's like all my weaknesses were grievously 

conflated into a mess of a person 

and that person was me and is me. 

I can't talk about it of course,

but I feel like it's OK to just say in this public space

of my small blog, 

that we can go through deep painful waters 

and it takes time to find land again.

That life can have real sorrow for how unwell one was,

and a growing wish to become well and that

it takes a long time but we must never give up,

because God, in His deep love and mercy, 

never gives up on us. 

***

I guess part of becoming more well is that one

grieves for how unwell one was

and for all that one still sees within oneself

that needs healing.

***

Well, I could not do much on my writing project,

but I did something at least.

***

I have, for a while, felt that the famous

Ladder to Heaven, 

that St John Climacus wrote on,

for me is like a spiral,

circles, 

that we go up and down in but somehow 

the circles are joined and can slowly

go towards Heaven, which means

we slowly become closer to Christ and 

who Christ wants us to be. 

But to get there requires a lot of pain, a 

lot of struggle and grief.

But I see very much that Christ,

who is Perfect LOVE, 

is worth every single ounce of grief,

pain and it's better to see one's self as 

broken than to think oneself as someone

who can make it through life without God.

***

I remember my dear Camp Director's Wife, who died in 1998,

she was really my first spiritual mother, 

outside of my Mom and Grandmothers, 

who are that in a different way,

and she had cancer and I remember her saying,

she can't imagine surviving such trials without God's help.

***

Well, I have to start small, 

be deeply greatful for the healing I have now

and pray that God will deepen the healing into 

something stable within me.

That, I am afraid, will take longer than I wish,

however, I was very encouraged and must remember the idea

that small changes in one's life and routine can build into 

the change one really wants.

And really, Met. Kallistos Ware is right when he said,

I think in the book Inner Kingdom,

that what everyone really wants is one thing:

repentance. 

For that is how we come to Christ 

and Christ is the one, the Beloved,

who we all so desperately are looking for

and often do not realize it.

***

May God help us. 

God's mercy is everlasting,

may we seek Christ's mercy in all things.