Grief

group focus today 2/8 we visited a cemetery, a look at ‘grief’, and (I) spent the majority of time writing whatever came into my head.

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What a strange place to think about grief.
I am sitting infront of a beautifully landscaped waterfall, there are graves and colourful flowers. Why use water in a place like this? It’s so full of life, that or a metaphorical washing away of pain. A facinating live thing to stare at, to compliment refection, a noise to block pain?
A renewing.

What has been my experience with grief and loss?
Pets – so shallow it seems now. Gut wrenching moments where you find out, or watch them die.
Shame when you recognised that you cried more for a parrot or a dog than your Opa.

No, my experience with grief stands aside from death and instead lies in change, in leaving.
My grief is in the memories I can never reclaim, and those (people) I seldom see.
Where the closest physically I can have a common ground is the ocean.
Why God does it hurt so much, do I long so much?
How little effort I take in keeping up with them. How I wanted things to stay as they were, and am too fearful, hesitant to place my fingers in the pot.

Why do momentary feelings of intense loss overwhelm me when I least expect it? When I thought I’d gotten over things? 3 and half years.

Always there is more expression of grief. Do the wells of our souls run dry?

What is important about grief?
That in the depth of our loss we find the depth of our love.
The captivating enjoyment, the added dimension that was bought to life through that individiual. What they taught you, what they just even bought aut in you by being part of your life.

Have I even known grief?

What about grief for suffering?
For infact death is the conclusion of pain for those of us with a lasting hope.

Ash Wednesday (re: incident on camp which I have yet to share)
Did I feel grief or compassion?
Can compassion translate into grief? What does it lose? What does it gain?
God where does grief fit into this world?

Is grief a stronger emotion than love? Or do the two go hand in hand?

Love withou grief > Jesus’s death. should we/I grieve that at all? What is acceptable/right – God honoring?

God I don’t understand really what I’m even feeling right now. I’m in this sheltered box with the sound of water drowning out the outside world.
Help me to grieve properly – what I haven’t grieved properly before. Let me love, fill me with compassion, for although it might hurt deeply, I guess the former outweights the problem of pain.

When peace, like a river,
attendeth my way,
When sorrows, like seabillows, roll;
Whatever my lot,
thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

It is well.

What is life?

How full of it this place is. In it’s loud water, naive birds, in the vibrant colours.

Fake flowers keep their colour,
their shape, their form.
They decorate memories vainly stamped in
stone.
Yet they lack life
like those below
They last and they fade
Instead of brilliance before wilting
Fake flowers call to the clanging
attempt at our hold on life.
Our rough sketches at withdrawing
from change.
The permenance we seek in a silent
crowded world.
Like the flowers we wither an die,
but the Lord’s love is with those that fear him (Ps 103)
Why do we wear our own colourful fake
facade?
When truth is a short lived
brilliance that leaves before it
fades.