Heartache

"A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island."

It's not quite December, but it's close. The view outside my window is definitely wintry. And the way I'm feeling today, I wish I was a rock. I wish I was an island. It would be so very easy to go back to building "walls, a fortress deep and mighty that none may penetrate". It would be easy to bury myself in my books and work, to hide myself in my room, to touch no one and allow no one to touch me. It feels so tempting.

Because life hurts. Relationships hurt. And sometimes, like today, I wonder if it's worth it at all. Is it really worth it to invest time and energy and emotion into a relationship that, in a heartbeat, in a breath, just ends? Except that it doesn't end. It leaves nerve endings, raw, still firing, as if a limb is still attached when it is not. How do you scratch an itch that isn't there? How do you soothe an ache in a hand that is gone? My head knows that it's over, but my heart can't seem to remember. My head tells me it's not forever, but my heart just feels a pain that goes on and on.

I miss her. Oh, God, how I miss her.

The thought drifts through my head, If I had never met her, I wouldn't miss her now. It was easier before, when I was locked up behind my walls, in the days when I touched no one and no one touched me. It was less painful in the days before I took those first, stumbling, tentative steps toward trust. It didn't hurt so much back then. I didn't feel much of anything back then.

The thought drifts through my head, Maybe it isn't worth it after all. Maybe learning to love and trust is just a sham after all. "If I never loved, I never would have cried." It's too late to do anything about it now, because I did love and I got hurt, but I want to cradle the severed limb protectively, and make sure something like this never happens again. I find myself looking with fear at all my other relationships -- what if it does happen again? You can't tell me it won't, because you don't know that. It could. And the anticipation of further pain is enough to tempt me to withdraw behind walls so impenetrable I will not be hurt again.

I can't eat; I'm not hungry. I eat mindlessly, mechanically, just for something to do, to distract myself.

I can't sleep; I can't shut off my thoughts. I want to do nothing but sleep, hide under my covers and never get out.

Instead, I get up morning after morning, I slap on my together-face, I face a world that has little patience for grief, and I find myself wondering, Maybe I should never have taken the risk.

And missed all those coffees at Tim Horton's?

Missed the smell of her perfume when she hugged me?

Missed all the cards that came in the mail, covered with stickers, which always seemed to arrive at just the right time, which sought me out from behind my walls, and dared me to trust and to love?

Missed experiencing Costco for the very first time with her?

Missed her laughter, her smiles, her prayers?
Missed her passion for the Lord?

Missed the hours she spent, investing in my life, only to go back to what she coaxed me from?

Just because it hurts now?

She believed in me. She believed there was something in there, something beyond all the prickles and brick walls that was worth loving, that may have been sleeping but hadn't yet died.  She believed in me. And try as I might, no matter how desperately it hurts now, no matter how cold the wind blows or how high the snow drifts today, no matter how barren things look outside my window, there is some part of my heart that insists that spring will come again. There is laughter beyond the tears. There is joy beyond the grief. Maybe, just maybe, there is joy even IN the grief. Maybe there is joy in the grief because hope refuses to die, and because to feel grief, as terribly as it hurts, is better than to feel nothing at all. To feel grief means I have felt joy - and love, and I don't want that to sleep in my memory. I don't want to forget spring.

I miss her. Oh, God, how I miss her.

The thought drifts through my head, If I had never met her, I would have never loved her. She would never have loved me. And that causes a pain far greater than the grief I feel now. To have never loved her? To have never known she loved me? That would have left me in a a Narnian-like, cursed "Always winter and never Christmas."

But I did meet her. Thankfully, in God's great providence, I did meet her. The curse was broken. I cannot go back. I cannot now "not love". He used her to wake my heart. I will not live in constant fear of it happening again, (though it might) because every winter of grief marks the end of a wonderful spring of renewal, a summer of growth, and a fall of harvest, and every winter of grief will be broken by a new spring. Some winters seem to come too early -- who wants snow in mid-November? Some winters seem to last too long -- late-April blizzards are so disheartening. Some winters are deep and cold and it seems we are constantly digging out from wave after wave of snowstorms. But the curse is broken. Spring will come. Fear must melt. Hope must live. Love must live.

"A winter's day

In a deep and dark December."

But the curse is broken. Christmas is coming. And the memory of spring breezes thaws my heart.

I am not alone.

And it's ok to cry.