It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to gather the gumption to sit down and write anything. As stated in my last post, the weight of grief is heavy on the soul. My precious husband suffered the loss of his first wife nearly six years ago, and the grief of that loss was almost more than he was able to bear. He’d known her since he was a young child, and he’d loved nobody else for most of his life. He was also blessed to know and love her mother and over the course of time, she became much more his mom than his mom-in-law.

Before his wife passed, he’d promised her he would take care of her mother, and he did. He took her even more fully as his own, their connection growing and deepening as the years went on. We were talking one day at dinner and had the realization that, in many ways, he carried forward the way Ruth did when she chose to stay with Naomi after her husband was lost. My husband commented that if he was Ruth, then his mother-in-law would obviously be Naomi, at which point I realized that put me in the role of Boaz. We found that incredibly funny at the time, as did the modern day Naomi when we shared our thoughts with her.

I was privileged to meet that great lady shortly after I began dating my husband, and the bond between us was immediate. We were talking one day, just a few weeks after our first meeting, and the discussion drifted to the loss of my mother earlier in the year, then to the loss of her daughter. We both had tears in our eyes and she told me she sure did love me, to which I replied that was a good thing, because I sure did love her, too. I told her I kind of needed a mom and she said she kind of needed a daughter. So, we adopted one another that day. I knew her health was failing, which made me even more grateful for the time we were given to know each other in this life.

Over the last several months, I have watched my husband do everything he could to look after her, all the while beginning to grieve the impending loss of someone else of great importance in his life. He protected her, cared for her, and did whatever he needed to do in an effort to make her life the best it could be. Earlier this week, she took her final steps to heaven, and now we are all doing our best to work through our grief. I wasn’t able to be there when my grandfather, grandmother, or mother recently passed, but I was blessed to be there as she took her final breaths.

Early that morning I’d gotten close to her ear and promised her I would look after her and her daughter’s family, and I will. I sat there beside her in that same spot as her breathing slowed more and more. I hadn’t expected to feel the wave of pain crash over me the way it did when another breath never came. I felt the pain of so many losses start crashing over me until I began to feel like a toddler standing on the ocean shore getting pummeled by the surf. At the same time, I struggle to feel as though I’m entitled to the amount of grief I’m experiencing, as I hadn’t shared as much for nearly as long as others who are wrestling with this same loss.

The bottom line is that loss hurts no matter how new or old, how shallow or deep. Everyone grieves in their own way, each loss different than the one that came before or the one that will come after. It is so important that we not put our own expectations on other’s grieving process. We must be respectful and be very careful to refrain from judgement because one person expresses their pain differently that we believe they should. The only one who can see directly into our hearts and minds is the Lord, and His is the only judgement that matters. Nobody has sole ownership of the grief a person leaves behind in their wake. The truth is, the larger the swath of grief, the larger the imprint of God’s love they left behind. What greater tribute can there be?

As you go through your day today, be aware of those around you. Ask God to help you be sensitive to the feelings and struggles of the people you encounter. You have absolutely no way of knowing whether that person is flying high as a kite in life, or suffering the weight of pain and grief like an anvil pulling them into the depths of the ocean. Looks can be deceiving, and more people hide their feelings than wear them on their sleeves, so don’t assume what you are seeing is the whole story. Just love each other. That’s all. Don’t make it complicated and don’t make it hard. Just choose love and move forward.

“But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.'” Ruth 1:16 AMP