Gratitude, Grace, and Grit - essentials for keeping on keeping on
1) It's out. We've all moved on to pursuits that take less time (well everyone but me, I don't enjoy watching videos). Our culture absorbs videos and snippets, small sound bytes. Things that can be consumed in less time.
AND
2) I've gotten great feedback from extrapolating my story of loss in a very monotone non-emotional way so I have succumbed to our culture's need for denial of pain or preference to gloss it over.
So why am I picking this back up? I feel like a fraud when I explain in a monotone way that my husband is dead. It usually comes out like "we lost him" ... it sounds like something just fell out of my pocket. I guess it strikes me as odd that for the whole of my life I've been an extremely authentic person. And these past months of taking a quiet backseat on all my ruminations I just feel like I've been disingenuous to myself. And as for videos and sound bytes ... this introverted deep thinker doesn't do either ... or I should say ... a sound byte of any substance would only come from a thorough exploration of a topic which needs more time. A blog really is the way to get to my sound bytes. Anyway so here I am trying it again. Mostly because I have a few topics I'd like to explore with the world.
But let's start with the new bio:
When life turns your whole world upside down you keep going. Gratitude, grace and grit are the new essentials that have kept me on the open road yet unknown. Driven and successful Mortgage Loan Originator by day, deep thinker by night. Blogging is a small outlet for the deep thoughts that ruminate throughout life's journey and bubble to the surface to come out into the light. Ode to joy my friends, the dark abyss gives birth to true joy.
This just sort of floated out of my mind when I sat down to write so I figure it's at least where I am today in this moment and I thought it was pretty good. So I'm going with it. But here's what you need to know about the essentials ...
Gratitude is key to moving through the pain. I don't expect the pain to ever be gone. But gratitude is critical to not becoming a bitter old woman. It took a long time for me to get angry about not getting to grow old with Brian, but it did happen, five years in on Brian's birthday this past September. I completely took all the anger and fury into the punching bag I bought for my youngest son on Brian's first post-dead birthday, at his request of course. Anyway, he did it sooner than me and I'm so proud of him. But I'm finally there and it goes like this ... serious punching then kicking on the bag, collapse on the bag, sobbing, then get up and walk in the rain, another round of serious ... basically all over again and again for hours on into the night. Then I collapse into bed and wake up with the most intense hamstring pain. I'm a wreck physically for weeks recovering from losing it on the punching bag. Anyway, all this to say, getting it out is a necessary part. So to be clear, gratitude is not glossing over the hard stuff and being thankful. Rather gratitude is looking it in the eye for what it is and acknowledging how fortunate you are. After all, this would not hurt so bad if we hadn't lost this amazing person. But I'm not just grateful for what we had in an amazing husband and father ... I am grateful for all the little things, like a beautiful sunset, a squeal of delight from my granddaughter, sitting by the fire right now while a storm rages outside. Gratitude is reveling in the good and beautiful as it passes you by while you are in it and not holding onto it in desperation. I've had to let go of who I got to be as Brian's wife and the mother of three beautiful children who are now grown and don't need me in the way they once did. The antidote for any loss is gratitude for all that was and still is.
Grace is not something I come by honestly. It's completely a work of the Holy Spirit for me to be gracious. Don't get me wrong I love being gracious but it doesn't come easy. One thing I will say about grace though is Brian and I agreed at some point that it was always better to err on the side of grace. When it came to parenting or some difficult situation where we weren't quite sure how to respond, if we were conflicted, we always chose the more gracious route. We didn't think we would ever regret being too gracious and we never did. The risk of being too gracious would be to be taken advantage of and I'm okay with that risk. Grace is a refinement of movement and a way of treating people kindly even when they don't deserve it. But most importantly it is something I have experienced in the context of my relationship with the Creator of the universe. He gives me/us unmerited favor that I/we don't deserve and have no way of earning. Experiencing God's grace is essential to be able to give grace to others.
Grit is tenacity to keep on going against all odds. I don't think my family expected me to survive losing Brian, I know I didn't want to and I know my kids were worried. But dig deep I did. Grit is just hanging on to God when you don't know what is next and staying true to all that you believe and keeping on going. Grit is getting back up when you fall down. There have been so many times that I've fallen down and just did not want to get back up. But there's always this shift, this small nudge, from outside of me, an Angel, the Lord himself, I don't know how it works but I've wrestled in the darkness (sometimes for hours or days) and then get back up. That's grit. And it's an essential to forward movement.
So those are the essentials that are keeping me going ... there are other G words that matter too like God, Guns, and Gardens AND last but not least, being Grandma! I guess you could call it my 7G network that makes me tick and well "ode to joy" ... we'll have to talk about that another day.
Grace is not something I come by honestly. It's completely a work of the Holy Spirit for me to be gracious. Don't get me wrong I love being gracious but it doesn't come easy. One thing I will say about grace though is Brian and I agreed at some point that it was always better to err on the side of grace. When it came to parenting or some difficult situation where we weren't quite sure how to respond, if we were conflicted, we always chose the more gracious route. We didn't think we would ever regret being too gracious and we never did. The risk of being too gracious would be to be taken advantage of and I'm okay with that risk. Grace is a refinement of movement and a way of treating people kindly even when they don't deserve it. But most importantly it is something I have experienced in the context of my relationship with the Creator of the universe. He gives me/us unmerited favor that I/we don't deserve and have no way of earning. Experiencing God's grace is essential to be able to give grace to others.
Grit is tenacity to keep on going against all odds. I don't think my family expected me to survive losing Brian, I know I didn't want to and I know my kids were worried. But dig deep I did. Grit is just hanging on to God when you don't know what is next and staying true to all that you believe and keeping on going. Grit is getting back up when you fall down. There have been so many times that I've fallen down and just did not want to get back up. But there's always this shift, this small nudge, from outside of me, an Angel, the Lord himself, I don't know how it works but I've wrestled in the darkness (sometimes for hours or days) and then get back up. That's grit. And it's an essential to forward movement.
So those are the essentials that are keeping me going ... there are other G words that matter too like God, Guns, and Gardens AND last but not least, being Grandma! I guess you could call it my 7G network that makes me tick and well "ode to joy" ... we'll have to talk about that another day.
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