Her Daughter’s View

I touched on this a little bit in my last post, but something not enough people talk about is how fast time flies when you’re grieving. My last two posts were 6 months between each other, and if you’d asked me, I would have a said a month or two. I don’t entirely mean this in a negative way, but I feel like I lost a whole year of my life grieving. I spent 2023 just trying to keep my head above water. Doing the bare minimum to get by was just about all I could handle, and I didn’t even realize it until I was reflecting back on the year.

I wanted to read the Bible last year. Over my 25 years, I am sure I have probably read the whole Bible several times, but I had never set my mind and read the whole things at once. I got a guide that tells you what to read each day to “read the Bible in a year” and I was on a really good roll, until February. Then, when Mom started Hospice, she became my priority. And after Hospice, grieving consumed me, and my life, and my brain, and my Bible reading. And I am not proud to admit it, but I didn’t pick up my Bible for months after that. Not only did I not read the Bible in a year, I didn’t even pick it up again until after summer.

I have the same goal this year, I am going to read the Bible in a year. I am going to take my life back this year. I am going to start rebuilding myself. The most enraging thing (at least for me) about grief, is that it changes you forever, you will NEVER be the person you were before loss, and there is quite literally not a single thing you can do about it. God wanted her back, and I can be mad and sad and pout about it all I want, but He was going to take her whether I wanted him to or not, and that is just a fact. But this year, I am going to start reclaiming myself, and my life, and I am going to fix my relationship wit Him.

It was actually terrifying looking back on 2023 and realizing that grief had taken over my life and I had become a shell of the person I was last New Year. This is not to say that I have “decided” I am done grieving, but it is to say that I am done letting grief rule me, and that I need to actually work on myself, and reclaim my time. If there is one thing I have learned it is that tomorrow is not promised. It was less than 3 weeks form the time my mom got REALLY sick, to us planning her funeral. I need to do more than “get by,” I need to enjoy my life again.