1 small hop, 1 big fall
Is it just me? Was washing dishes just now and I tried to get it together. I’m thinking about everything that’s happened in the last 8 years and I wanna know...is it just me? Right after I started undergrad, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Right after I started grad school, my mum was diagnosed with cancer. Right after I finally graduated from grad school, my uncle and my dad passed. Presently, right after I waited a year and a month for this dream first job to suddenly appear - and it actually appeared! - my grandma’s health takes a turn for the worst and the nurses say she probably won’t make it to next week. ???? She’s the only grandparent I’ve known well and she’s so funny, so she is going to be sorely missed.
With one small but amazing hop forward, there’s always this huge fall afterward.
???
I think the inescapable truth is that inevitably, these annoyingly difficult things were going to happen sooner or later, one way or another. Thinking about this weird pattern seemed more productive than crying about it, so I think I’m writing just to sort out my thoughts before they manifest into bad reactions. My therapist taught me this cognitive behavioral therapy hack where, basically, if I work to catch and label my feelings as merely natural, reasonable responses before they evolve into downer thoughts, I can avoid awful reactions (such as depressive spells, stress eating, loss of confidence..)
So what the situation looks like right now is having multiple browser windows open, with one to search up moving truck options (to relocate for the new job) and another one that I just used to search up distances from our place to the long-ago pre-arranged burial site for my grandma.
Man.
I sat at my grief counseling session this morning and wondered whether mentioning another imminent point of * grief * to my therapist would be a bit overkill (no pun intended). Before that ended, I got a call from the hospice nurse that had been arranged to visit my grandma, and I rushed over there to find that nothing really was to be done except to continue to let her sleep and check her blood pressure. The good...the excellent thing is that she seems so peaceful and calm. The bad thing is that this comes at what was already a pretty turbulent transition period for me. So this is how life goes. Pun intended.
To end these...musings...Lately I’ve had a number of non-Christians attending the Bible study class I teach at church. I am always trying to break the stereotype that Christians are quick to listen, but quicker to give rules. So it has been meaningful. Considering all the controversial topics headlining in our world today, I always find myself wondering what Jesus himself would do if He were here. When I look at the way a lot of ultra-conservative Christians are quick to dismiss people who aren’t fitting their perceived Biblical standards, I just feel like Jesus would have been a lot more gentle and loving in His approach to sort things out. The stories we read always talk about Him asking people deep questions and listening, even though He’s freakin Jesus and is meant to know everything, already. To me, I see Him as loving and kind. To the next level. He is recorded to have wept (read: crying level 10) for a friend that died. So tracing back to my present situation, I have to say I’m really thankful to be able to put my hope in an all-powerful being that is so loving. Even if this whole Christianity thing was a gimmick, I gotta say the mere feeling of being so convinced God and His love are real...is a gift in itself. I can finally process what it means to be thankful to be * saved *. It can’t be fully explained, but it helps. It’s encouraging. And at this point, I am completely thankful for all the encouraging help I can get.
1 small hop, 1 big fall, a million miles forward to fly
