Though I walk through the Valley and the Swampy Marsh

What does grief look like? What is it like to live with loss?

There are many moments, especially relating to the loss of a family member, that the feelings of grief or extreme loss hit you when you are least expecting it. A parent,a spouse, a sibling, a child…

This year, as I woke up on January 1, 2015 the thing that came to mind was “This will be 10 years since Dad died. It’s ok Ash. You’ll get through it.”

10 years. 10 whole years. I just can’t really believe it. I look at the eyes of Matt’s dad, and the little wrinkles that have started to form, the silver hairs that grace his head… and I feel so thankful to have him here. I also feel heaviness in my heart…that my dad never got to get those wrinkles laughing at his grand kids… or the silver hairs, or the hugs and talks. To hold the squirmy babies, to see his daughters as moms, or to walk all of them down the aisle. To see his one and only son become a man. To watch his wife be a grandma.

And we can say, everyday, to those that have faced loss… to focus on what you do have. Not on what you don’t. Not on what you will never have here on earth. That is thing about loss…. that’s what makes it a loss… You lose something you can never get back. It isn’t on loan, it isn’t hidden. It’s gone.

It is easy to expect people to simply come to terms with that loss, and with it toss out all of the hopes surrounding that life. Sometimes if I shared all of the feelings that pop into my heart at the strangest moments, I think it would surprise people… unless they had lost someone too.

Here I am, nearly 10 years since my dad died, still living with his loss, and facing the grief of it all. I don’t think there is ever a magic moment to simply “get over it.” I do think God helps me to get through it though.So I don’t find myself stuck… in grief. In wishing life could be different. That is the thing about it all… we don’t know what life would be like. I always want to imagine the ideal in my mind…. but that’s not fair either. We rarely imagine the problems and the struggles. So I have to simply trust that I don’t know, and I don’t need to know, I must simply hold the hand of God. Sometimes cling to it.

Trust is hard. And sometimes I hate that answer.

When there is loss and life it just feels that much more confusing. When we lost our baby I was so so so devastated. And we got pregnant shortly after. And I really hadn’t processed that loss, honestly I still haven’t. What does that even mean?! I love Finley with all my heart. I wouldn’t ever change a thing about her. Yet, we walked through that loss and all of the hopes for that little life being lost too… and we would have never had Finley. But it just twists my mind and my heart sometimes. Like a piece of our family is missing. The ache begins to grow dull, and I find myself questioning my heart when it isn’t burning anymore. When the sting of answering “3 kids” begins to fade, or having Finley called the third baby instead of the fourth doesn’t flush my face. That people don’t know how much it stings my heart when they say I have 3 kids. But it’s not them…. it’s not their words. It’s me. It’s my mama heart. Tears well up in my eyes when I think of that baby we never got to meet, and the loss of her. Something in our heart cries “I seem ok, and I am, but I AM NOT OK WITH THE LOSS!!! IT ISN’T OK WITH ME!! I DON’T WANT IT!”

I don’t want it, and I don’t want anyone else to have to walk with it. It just sucks. It does. Yet by the grace of God, he helps us get through the suffocating moments. The dark days…. and those days will come. They will come 1 year after, 10 years after and 20…. and 30 and 50. They will come. Yet God walks with us in the valleys and on mountain tops…. and through the muggy swamps where you feel like you are sinking, and it’s clinging to you with every bit of strength it possesses trying to pull everything off you until nothing is left but the skin of your back… but he walks you through the sludge into the freshwater of the slow moving creek bed. And he washes the sludge off. And he looks ahead, not back…. and he gives you the courage to keep moving.

Reach out your hand, he will grab it.

-Miss Ash