DANCING WITH GRIEF: FIVE YEARS

My mother would have celebrated her 81st birthday this week. I'm a month short of the anniversary of Jolene's death.

And the news is: I wrote a post for http://christianfictionhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/ for Tuesday, the 12th, and mentioned that my mother and Abraham Lincoln shared the day as their birthday.

And I didn't cry. I didn't even feel sad. I simply wrote the words, as if it was any other day.

As I look back on Jolene's death, I realize how very blessed I have been. I am falling in love with a man who lost his son to murder two years ago.

I'm three years further into the process of healing than he is. But even at this stage, I can see how isolated he has been in his grief, and how it has stunted him on every level. Meeting me, the love God has given us to share, is opening him up, allowing him to feel joy and peace and hope again.

I am there. Jolene is firmly fixed as part of my past. She is also part of my future, the day when I shall reunited with Mom, Grandma, and Jolene.

But for now--she is a beloved memory, a force in shaping who I am today, a person who is still reaching and touching others through her words--but she is not a daily source of tears.

Although I come close to crying as I write this.

Please pray with me, as I write about Jolene, and my walk through grief, as I write about the blessing for "those who mourn."