And so it begins.........

Ah, today was kind of a hard one.  Perhaps it was exhaustion from yesterday's events, perhaps it is just part of the process or realizing, it is real.  My baby is gone.  

Now that the events following Ryan's death are over, the company is gone and we have gone back to work and school, we are stepping into each moment wondering if this is what "normal" feels like.   If this is normal than it is filled with moments that catch me off guard.  I'm feeling good and strong and then out of nowhere my mind is filled with a picture of Ryan in his casket, or Ryan just off the mountain, or Ryan walking through the door or standing next to me doing worship.  Tonight my dad and I went to see Mirror, Mirror.  There was a line in the movie that made me think how Ryan would have made a woman joke about that.  A vise gripped my chest and I immediately started tearing up. Is this what it is going to be like?  Probably.  Loss is real and it is o.k. to miss something that meant so much.  I'm learning that it will become about what I do with that loss. 

Today on the way home from work I was stuck in traffic and all of a sudden, in the quiet of the car I just started tearing up.  The quiet is what gets me.  It allows the thoughts to crowd in and the visions of the past to fill my mind.  Then, "Whatever You're Doing" by Sanctus Real came on and the chorus really spoke to me: 

"Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but now I can see
This something bigger than me
Larger than life something heavenly
Something heavenly."



By Jodi Shen Lewis
Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings  Psalm 17:8

This IS something bigger than me and I must keep my eye on the bigger story.  I'm asking God to cover me in the shadow of His wings and guide me down this journey of grief.  If I step outside His covering, that is when grief could so easily consume me.  In Jesus, I purpose to not let that be the case but to stay under the shadow of His wings.