Grief is love with no place to go….

Happy Thursday, friends!

This has been a busy, short week for us!

We are ready for Friday.

I wanted to share a post with you all today that was written by my father in law.

He doesn’t do social media, but his office at Teen Challenge has an account and he shared this on that FB page.

With his permission, I wanted to share it on my blog also.

If you’ve ever lost a loved one or have personally dealt with grief, I hope this touches your heart.

We miss my mother in law, Lequeeta, every single day.

It’s been over eight months since I lost the love of my life. Sometimes it seems as though Lequeeta was here just yesterday, smiling at me, laughing with me, holding me, comforting me. Other times, it feels like it has been ages since I saw her warm, familiar face.

I think of her every single day. Sometimes sadness consumes me when I picture her in my day dreams. Other times, I’m sad but I don’t feel like crying. The missing her and the loneliness are always there, but sometimes the memories of her also bring me a feeling of calmness. They reassure me. They make me feel safe.

But when life is hard or emotional, her loss feels inexplicably heavy.

My heart feels heavy, consumed in sadness, and I wish that she could be here. I feel the full weight of missing her, and in these instances, I don’t have a way to cope. I don’t have anything that will make me feel better.

I used to think the pain would be temporary. You lose someone, and you grieve, and then you go on living. I thought there was a specific window for grief to occur, or that a certain time could be allotted to grieve.

I didn’t realize it was something that I would carry forever.

But I’m learning that grief doesn’t follow a pattern. It doesn’t have walls or boundaries that dictate when it will show up. It doesn’t follow any predictable pattern.

Grief comes at the strangest of times. Sometimes I’ll be laughing, and I’ll think of Lequeeta. And I’ll miss her with all of my heart, yet I’ll still be able to laugh. I will feel the grief, but at the same time, I will still be able to smile. It’s like I can still see the joy in the world while simultaneously missing her.

But other times, she touches my heart and the grief is overwhelming and heavy. There’s nothing I can do to relieve the pain. It’s all encompassing. And I feel my heart breaking all over again because I realize that I’ll be missing her for the rest of my life.

I guess I thought that by now, I would be OK…I would have healed. But I’m learning that perhaps grief always stays with us. And even as we heal from loss, grief becomes a part of who we are.

It doesn’t leave our side.

Sometimes grief is quiet. It remains hidden beneath the surface and comes out at unexpected times.

Many times I will cry at something that I wouldn’t expect to be saddened by, like a scene from a movie or a really beautiful song. I think sometimes these unexpected tears are an expression of my grief quietly resurfacing. I feel the sadness, but I don’t always realize that it is coming from missing the person I loved.

Sometimes grief comes in my most joyful moments. It’s that aching feeling in my chest or in my throat that reminds me that someone very wonderful is missing, but that life is still beautiful. Because life can still be beautiful even in the midst of grief.

The beautiful thing about grief is that grieving the loss of someone and missing someone, means I was lucky enough to have loved someone and to have been loved by someone.

It means that I had someone so very special, someone irreplaceable, who brought light into not only my world but so many others. I guess I’d like to think that the sadness I feel is the price we pay for love.

More than anything, I wish I could see Lequeeta and tell her just how much I love her. I wish I could talk to her. I wish I could ask her how her day was going, or call her on the phone, just to chat. I wish I could hug her, even just one more time. And my heart aches for her. I miss her with every fiber of my being.

And this is why losing someone is so hard. Because the feeling of missing that person never ends. The ache never fully goes away. The pain of the loss never subsides.

Yes as a Christian and a firm believer I know I will see Lequeeta again, but just because you have hope doesn’t mean your won’t have pain.

I have begun to learn how to live with it. Im learning how to live in a world without Lequeeta. And I’m trying to learn how to be almost OK again.

I would like to think that those we lose never fully leave us. I would like to think that they become a part of us, that they live on within us.

Lequeeta lives in my heart and is by my side each step of the way. And even though God’s grace is sufficient , and I may heal for the most part, I will still carry some grief with me forever, because grief is the equivalent of love.

Lequeeta a part of who I was and who

I am. My life have been permanently changed because of her.

So while I may have this hole in my heart , I can take peace in knowing that because of the person I miss, my life has been changed for the better.

I will never stop missing Lequeeta, and I don’t want to. I am afraid of losing my memories of her. I am afraid of losing her smile or forgetting the sound of her voice.

So I am going to cling tightly to my memories. I’m going to cry when I need to cry. And I’m also going to celebrate and honor her life whenever I get the chance. Because someone so beautifully special deserves to be remembered and celebrated.

My love for Lequeeta is not over. We will always be soulmates. And I am proud of this. I am proud to walk through this life with a part of her in every single thing I do.

There is no one way to grieve. But I do hope you know that grief is born out of love. In fact, grief is love. So allow this love to fill you up and be sure to take this love with you, wherever your path may lead.

GRIEF IS LOVE WITH NO PLACE TO GO