Is it wrong to want to speed up time?
I might have said it before but the waiting is excruciating. What am I waiting for? I don’t know.
It started at the hospital. I thought I was waiting for people to come, then to my house. Then I thought I was waiting for the arrangement details to be made, then the viewing, then the funeral.
But the feeling lingers. Every day I am waiting. Waiting for my life to start over. Waiting for the pain to subside enough to feel comfortable. Waiting for the paperwork and details to be sorted out. Waiting for legal papers, insurance, the stinking death certificate! For that I might be waiting months – 6 months even. Waiting until after all the kids’ birthdays, Anita’s birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, valentine’s day…how long must I wait?
I have been reading C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed”, a book he wrote about his feelings and thoughts immediately after his wife died. He describes it perfectly:
And grief is still like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permenantly provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always has too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.
My rational self says that I must go through this to heal. This is part of the process. It still sucks.
My spiritual self knows that God walks with me. He smiles and holds my hand. But he knows, too, that I must go through the pain. It still sucks.
Anita and Peter are looking down on me, and my grandfather too. They know my pain. They know my struggles. They know my sins. They smile and trust in God’s plan and my strength. But it still sucks.
Once I thought, “What if I could find a man who went through this but, through his faith, was able to overcome the pain? Could I learn from him?”
But such a man does not exist. We MUST go through the pain so on the other side we are even stronger. It is only my ego that thinks I can circumvent it. As much as we don’t like it, it makes us who we will be.
A wise friend of mine who has gone through a lot of challenges in her life wrote: “I wouldn’t change anything about myself, my life choices, or my experiences, because they have all made me a much wiser and more captivating woman!”
One day I hope to have that kind of perspective on this experience.
