Everything reminds me of him. The wind will blow and I imagine it blowing on his skin. The sun shines and beats down my neck and I can imagine it trying warm his skin and me seeking shade to protect him. I turn on the radio and every song from breakups to true love becomes about it. He is not in my arms yet the idea of him is so very real to me.

It is like I fell through a crevice in the universe and now I am living some parallel version of my life. If I look over I can see that other life. I see sleepless nights and the stress of a move but I also see quiet moments of awe and wonder and cuddles and breathing in that newborn smell. But that is not my life.

At the same time, as I live in my parallel universe, I look over and around and see everyone else’s life going on as usual. I want to shake them and force them to see that EVERYTHING has changed. Why can’t they see that?

The sad truth is that people don’t mean to be insensitive but sometimes they just are. To them it has been nearly two months since James and to me it happens over and over and over again. The shock, the sudden turning upside down of everything that was. I am stuck on repeat while everyone else “moves on.”

It is exhausting to grieve. So exhausting that it is easier for me to put a smile on my face and keep busy busy busy and give myself things to do to fill the void that James left. Maybe to the outside it looks like I am doing okay, that I am moving forward and upward but as C.S. Lewis said,

“For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.”

I am stuck in that spiral and I suspect I will be for awhile. I am okay with that and I don’t expect to be full rescued for awhile. For now I am rescued in moments where I am crying on the floor and my precious son come over to rub my back.  I am carried by angels both her on earth and in the heavens who answer prayers. I am rescued by my increasing knowledge of the mercy and grace of God.

And I don’t say that lightly. I don’t always want to vent and have this awkward “but God is still good” clause at the end of every post but I always feel it necessary to remind not you (whoever might be reading this) but to remind myself. Amid this crappy situation I am drawn to Him. I am drawn to Him for answers, for peace, for guidance, for light when the darkness feels as if it will consume me. How blessed that light feels when it comes, how grateful I am for those who say and do exactly what I need to help lift and guide me towards rediscovering what I have always known; Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love me.

So with that knowledge, I will begin another journey up the spiral.