Riding the waves of grief is crazy and hard.

Oliver brings me so much joy. Each moment that I get to spend with him is a gift, and I am so thankful for him. I have a lot of things to be thankful for and so many things in my life that bring me great joy. But, despite all the good things, my sorrow remains.

Grief often feels like I am blindfolded on a roller coaster and I never know what feeling is coming next or at what speed.

I look at Oliver’s face and I remember Lucy’s. I laugh with him, and I wish she was here to laugh with us. Every day she is missing. I see him hug his cousins and friends and I wish he was hugging her, his little sister.

Grief always seems to tag along, no matter how well I think I’m doing.

For me, the highs are usually followed by lows. The best days usually leave me missing Lucy the most. I need to grow to be better at managing my joy and my sorrow. It’s like I need for them to find a way to get along. They always seem to be crashing into one another.

Here is an example of how our joy and our sorrow spill over into one another. I took the first photo of Oliver, (in this post), this week on our front porch. It’s so tough to get a good photo of him right now because he doesn’t like to hold still. In the below text conversation, Shaun and I were talking about the photo. (He is gray, I’m blue.)

Grief is greedy, and it will steal all of my joy if I let it.

At first I felt guilty when I was happy. I felt like I was forgetting her by being happy. It took a little bit of time to manage my emotions and understand that there is room to feel both joy and sorrow. I’ve been given this day. I have a sweet little boy who needs me and a wonderful man who needs me too. Being happy doesn’t make us forget Lucy. Being happy is okay and being sad is okay. My counselor once told me that there are not good (happy) and bad (sad) emotions; they’re just both emotions. You shouldn’t feel guilty feeling either.

When I begin to feel grief step in, things can go downhill pretty fast. I can be laughing and smiling and within seconds my mood has deteriorated and I’m slipping into sadness, and sometimes even tears. Grief has it’s place, it shouldn’t be avoided, but lingering in it too long isn’t ideal.

When grief grips me, it is hard to see the light and move towards it. I’ve had whole days ruined by grief before, and that makes me mad because it doesn’t deserve to take that much of me. It takes me away from the joy of right now, that has been given to me. Healing takes time and patience (boy do I struggle with being patient). Some days I feel like I am going backwards, and I know that is normal. But as the days go by, the amount of time grief seems to “be in charge” is less. The rhythm of my breathing gets steadier and more in control.

Focusing on the fact that I have hope that I will see Lucy again someday really helps me to not feel completely overcome with grief. However, I often struggle with taking life one step at a time. I am always thinking too far ahead and that makes things tough. If I think about the fact that it could be 60 years before I see Lucy, I literally feel like I can’t breathe; like I’m choking on grief. And the tears come. Sometimes this spirals into wanting to feel angry about it. After that, I find my way back to remembering that God is in control. He knows what he is doing even when I don’t understand. He penned all the days of Lucy’s life before they came to be. She lived for 38 weeks and one day. God is Lucy’s God, just like he’s mine. He loves her, just like he loves me.

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139:15-16