A New Year

I have a hard time with the new year. I think I had someone say that I would be happy just to forget 2011.

But that's not true. I'm not saying that it has been an easy year, but it has been one of my happiest and my saddest intertwined. I was so incredibly happy with my family. I met Perry in June, and we enjoyed our time together. It was a good birth. It was a good beginning. I got to see my Daughter become a very good Big Sister, and my husband smile as he held a child on each knee. He said we now really felt like a family.

The rest is a really ugly blot of pain. It sucks that this pain will continue longer than he lived. I hate that it threatens to steal all the happiness he gave me if I let it. I hate that all searches for meaning just leave me more confused and wounded.

There is a reluctance to move into 2012, but what is it except a paper designation? We like to section our lives into neat little time frames, but it is not just a second, a day, a month, a year... It is a continous line stretching before. We tell ourselves if we lose our pain, the only seemingly tangible thing we have left, we will forget the people we love and that thin thread will snap that connects us. But they are still there, it is not broken.

The hard thing is that we are human and live our lives in such a finite frame. Our minds cannot comprehend. I wonder sometimes if we have such a hard time comprehending death becsue we are wired for eternity? This mind does not fit this fragile body, and when the two conflict it can be incredibly confusing. Our soul says we love them, they cannot leave us... but our brain that is composed of tissue and logic screams out death.

I read stories of people who feel they have been somehow touched and that they know that their loved ones are ok. I hear others say the bible clearly states X and Y. I have come to the conclusion that I will not seek out people to tell me what I want to hear or do not want to hear. I will also no longer listen to people who say what the bible says on a topic. I will read and find out for myself. Sometimes well meaning or ill meaning, they are incorrect. If the still small voice whispers to me directly, that is the only way I will believe. I need a direct hand to lift me out of this darkness, not a reflection in a mirror held up by another.