Again Today, Perhaps For Always

Today would have been Joe's 28th birthday. We made a cake and had a little celebration. I wanted it to be fun and happy. Something Providence can look back on with fond memories. Honestly it's hard to honor someone who is not there, no one to blow out the candles, or shower birthday kisses on. No one to find the perfect gift for (or not find one). I told the story of Joe's 21st birthday, we got into a car crash on that one (without drinking and driving). I find if I dwell on the past too long I still desire to go back to it, I feel like a shadow of what I was before Joe died. Last year I made a few scrapbook type pages to place at Joe's grave along with the cupcake we have done in the years past. I put some scripture along with some pictures and a small excerpt of a journal entry I made long ago awhile after we had married.

I love him so much I wonder how, and the only answer I have is I have is because God made it so. Because God made me to love him with all I have. Because he makes me fly. Because no one has ever felt love before I met him. Because loving him is loving me. Because God made it so, my dreams came true. -Elisabeth (2003 journal)

I can remember how I felt then. That no one could be happier, my cup full and overflowing. Now my smiles and laughter seem to be just a reflection in a pool of what it was. I keep thinking of the verse in Proverbs:

Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful;

Though this verse in the midst of describing the unrighteous; this line makes me think of myself. Though I do love my life and enjoy it, though I laugh loud and often, though I look forward to each day, though I would not trade the life given to me for one of my own choosing, my heart stays heavy. Will I always feel so broken? So incomplete? Am I doing something wrong? Am I not allowing the Lord to be my completion? Is it ok to be grieving this way over three years later? Still wondering why? Still having dreams that it's all been a terrible mistake? I know that I have, and continue to heal, I know it's a process, undefined, a new and different territory with person grieving. I don't know how the Lord heals, I don't know the time line, I don't know if I will always sorrow. I don't know alot, but I do know that the Lord, He is God, even when my heart sorrows, he is my Shepard in the valley of the shadow of death, he is my God and there is no other.