Loss is Inevitable

One thing I have learned in life is that loss is inevitable and is going to happen. I suppose that I learned at a very early age that you loose those you love no matter how hard you cry, or how hard you wish them back. I spent many hours looking up to the sky wondering why God took my dad and why I was the "one" who had no dad. I eventually stopped asking the why of it all and accepted that there are things that happen and I may never know the reason and then one day I may know all of the reasons. Ironically now I am put in the paths of grown children, people my age, who are loosing their parents to a terminal illness or old age and I am their nurse. And now I am in the paths of addicts who are slowly dying from their addiction. Last night I met with the family of a new patient that I am taking on. I spent a lot of time with one daughter in particular that I go to church with. She told me that she felt that God had led her to me and that she knew I was the one to take care of her mother. What a treat that was for me to hear. I found myself assuring her that everything was going to be o.k. and that ll of her feelings are normal and that I would do my best to make her mother comfortable and at ease.

As I wonder through this summer and I have done a lot of wondering, I have had to look "loss" right in the face. Through my job, through my passion for helping recovering addicts and through the death of my marriage and my life as I knew it. Death comes in so many forms. Death of a relationship, death of hope, death of a dream. But with each death or loss I have found that behind it there is a newness ready to happen and a new life waiting for us to take hold of it. Grief is a crazy thing. I have grieved loosing something that I realize I never really had. Thats a tough one. I have cried at red lights, I have set on my porch and cried alone, I have told friends on the phone I am o.k. and then hung up and sobbed, I have tried to run and hide and stay so busy that I don't feel it. Until lately god has started dealing with me and telling me to let it out. I have found myself sobbing on Interstate 40 and cried for God to just send someone to hold me through this and then realized that SOMEONE has been holding me all along.

As I pulled into my driveway last night I was met at my car by a neighbor whose daughter is in the throws of drug addiction to the point that she is stealing to get her drugs and she is one step away from violating probation and going to jail for two years. As we stood there and talked and Jenny asked me for my help, they got a phone call that their daughter had tried to overdose and was on her way to the hospital. And so another one is put in my path and I will go talk to her about treatment and try to help her loose the life she has and die to the drug addiction and embrace a new life that is out there waiting. But she will have to loose this life before she gets the new one. And as always I look up to the Heavens and say "yeah, I know what I'm supposed to do". Somehow in a crazy way helping others through their loss is helping me to die to myself and die to my old thoughts and ideas and embrace a new life.