I have hesitated to use this word in the midst of this journey I am on. I know and love others who are truly walking the road of grief…for they have lost someone they love from this world. It has felt disrespectful, insensitive, uncaring, to use a word for myself that seems to belong to another. One that feels as if it is owned by others in such a season of ache, of pain, of true loss. The loss of a son, a daughter, a love…gone from this life forever. 
This is not me. I do not grieve a death from this life. The ones I love still walk this earth. They are still flesh and bone and life.  They are not a breath, a memory, a thought. And yet they are lost to me. They belong to another. They have lives that I no longer look into.   Their love is closed to me. Their eyes no longer look upon me. And yet my love remains. Growing in its force every day. It does not wane. It does not loose it’s hold. It goes deeper. Wider. Stronger. And yet more quiet and more still. 

A father. 

A mother. 

A husband. 

A son. 

And I grieve. 
But I did not misunderstand His promise to me. 
I believe Him. 
So I grieve what I must live in this moment. I rise but still ache. I stand but I move forward. I weep but I know joy.  I do not understand but I have peace.  So it may not look the same as what I thought it needed to be….in order for it to be mine, but it is still mine and it is still this present road….

Grief is my companion.