Looking back, I can hardly see how I have survived with any sort of existence these last 3 years: through Sondra’s cancer, death, and continued absence. I still choke at the glimpse of a picture, the mention of her name, or the frequent glimpse of memorabilia around our home, or the home of her parents. Healing has come, but grief is a wily foe. It seems it is never conquered, and even when the smallest battle is won, the mere thought of relief seems to return you to your grief, for “grief” wants to tell you that recovery in itself is a loss of hope: as if recovering from grief is due in part to a forgetting of the grieved, a lessening of the loved, and despairing of loving at all. For if we are so easily forgotten, where is the greatness in love? Yet if we don’t somehow release our grip on these memories of love, can we fully experience more love. If we can release our grip, it will release its grip on us. Those memories will return, floating, and more accurate and real, if we allow them to be remembered for what they are, but not revered as more than they are. Somehow we must find a new place to hold our lost loved ones in high regard, not only remembered, but revered in a way that rejoices at the memory, and the hope of our reunion in glory, the glory of Heaven and the presence of the one that made Heaven possible, yea, that made Heaven, and Earth, and the Earth to come! It is only the thoughts and hopes of heaven and glorious reunion that foils the grip of grief, and wins the battle of our wily foe. Next time you turn the corner and win a battle over grief, remember that even when grief returns, it is but for a season, for God has numbered grief, as the days of this present age, but who numbers the days of eternity? When we enter into eternity with God, this present age, with its grief will be as a mist disappearing in the sunrise! Oh, Glorious Day!
