Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4, 6b (CSB) says, “There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven: … a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; … a time to keep and a time to throw away; …”
Grief is funny and often misunderstood. Never did I understand that you could grieve more than just the loss of a loved one until I started back in therapy and then saw a post on Instagram that talked about the many things a person can grieve. Not only can we grieve the loss of a loved one, a pet and a breakup or divorce - but we can also grieve major life transitions, being unable to achieve a goal or fulfill a dream, a diagnosis, not living the life we hoped we would live, the effects of big decisions (even when those decisions are ultimately good for us), losing a job or switching careers, a friendship breakup, the person we were before something traumatic or life-altering occurred, moving to a new location, and grieving a faith transition or a shift in our other beliefs.
~ You see the post felt weighty to me because I was in state of grief already, specifically friendships that no longer were. It took me months to accept what now is, but even in that I am learning that grief is not something that just all of a sudden stops - it can come and go in waves. AND BOY! Have I been riding this wave of grief for quite some time now, and every time I think I’m out of the woods, something else pops up. So not only have I been grieving former friendships, I’ve been grieving family dynamics, I’ve been grieving the Tenia I thought I knew before becoming a mother of 2 beautiful boys and last but not least, grieving a faith transition. I credit my therapist for actually bringing to the forefront that I’ve been in this place for some time now because I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, I just thought it was part of the season of adjustment that I was going through while I was pregnant with my second son. Turns out, it’s been a mixture of both adjusting and grieving at the same time.
Becoming a mother of 2 is really when I believe the grieving of a major life transition + the person we were before a life-altering occured. Going from one kid to two kids really is no small feat and so many things I thought and expected to remain the same really smacked me into the unknown. My expectations of how life would presume and how I’d be able to juggle motherhood, marriage and even myself. I feel like holding onto previous expectations is also a control thing for me. Since I already knew what to expect, I could somehow still be in control but God quickly and swiftly let me know that would not be the case going forward. So now I’m more okay with the former things not being the new things.
Remember when I felt like God called me to turn the blog into a podcast? Two episodes came from that and then it just all came to halt … and yes I am aware that at the time I was almost 7/8 months pregnant so I had quite a bit of dip on my chip. I thought I found a new way of producing the same content, but I think I was just tired of typing and trying to come up with something to write about. I think I was getting burnt out trying to come up with stuff on my own, in my own strength. I stopped relying on the one who gave me the idea to even start this blog in the first place, I tried to turn it into something else that I don’t quite think God told me to do if I’m being honest. Now on the flip side, maybe he did call me to it for a brief moment, to get something out of me, but I don’t think that’s where he ultimately wanted me to end up. It’s never out of the space of possibilities for God to tell you to do something, but what happens when His voice becomes muffled against YOUR OWN and what YOU want to do? Or how YOU want to take it and run with it on your own??? It’s all temporary satisfaction cause I called myself away from the one who called me to it all from the very beginning.
Maybe I was so interested in starting back up a podcast because I was grieving the podcast that my husband and I started during the top of the pandemic back in 2019 and now I’m realizing that’s what it was.
And then there is the grieving of my former relationship and time spent with God. I am constantly having to remind myself that it was for a specific season and time that it was that way. Now that I’m in a different time and season, it’s going to look different! I been beating myself up and grieving this one real hard, I just keep going back and forth and trying to figure out why, asking God why and the answer has been the same since he first revealed it to me. No room for God to be God right? Because I’m trying to control how I want him to show up in my life, because I want him to show up the way it did before not realizing that my capacity has shifted so He has to show up differently. Days at a time I have talked myself out of prayer and spending time in the secret place with Him because the routine I once had was no more, the feeling that I once had was not quite the same. My pastor/friend would say that if you keep waiting on a feeling to come and stay, you’ll be waiting forever for it. It is still taking some time for me to understand that, but I feel like if I sit in it for too long, grieve it for too long, I’m going to ultimately miss Him and what he wants to do and what he wants to say next.
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