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Betty,
Wonderful to hear from you. Your testimony of God's faithfulness has been a blessing here at this site for a long time.
It's important to hear life stories like this, that it continues to be a challenging path when we've lost someone. The other side of this story is that 37 years later, your dad's memory is still be talked about and his life is still having an impact on those that he loved.
Well, that impact is different for different people, obviously. In the case of your former sister-in-law, the memories might seem bitter. This points to a very important fact that we shouldn't gloss over hard facts about someone that has died, but we have to be faithful to have God soften our hearts so we don't get bitter and hurt ourselves inside as we age. If we don't do grief care, our lasting testimony with our loved ones is not going to be as strong because we won't live as victorious in
Christ.
Betty, we've walked with you as you've done the hard work of grief. Your journey has in no way been easy, but you've been faithful to put your heart out there and deal with the challenging things of your family's past. I think you've put yourself in a great place for God's healing and fullness in your life.
May God be with you in a special way this month as you relive the hard memories and the good ones. Thanks for writing and sharing your process with us.
In God's incredible love and grace,
John
Betty <bchile@...> wrote:
Betty <bchile@...> wrote:
Hello to everyone...it's been pretty quiet on here for a long time
and I pray that all are doing ok...making it thru the good and bad
days knowing the God never leaves our side.
I write because I'm struggling more this year than usual and thought
maybe some of the newer members need to know that we all still have
feelings along the journey no matter how long it's been and that
it's ok. It was 37 years ago this week that our family struggled
as he had brought my dad home to die and spend his last days
suffering from brain/bronchial cancer. I was 13 years old at the
time and will be the first to admit that I was always a "daddy's
girl". I'm usually ok with it all these past several
years..sometimes it even sneaks up on me and I have to stop and
wonder why I'm just in a kind of quite mood until I realize the time
of year and then I make a toast to his memory, remember the good
times and thank God that he is in heaven and I will someday see him
and spend eternity with him, mom and the Lord. This year I am
struggling with the hard memories of that week...the "bad memories"
that we all try and push to the back corners into the history book
of our life. A former sister-in-law brought up historic events of
that last week several days ago...and the discord between my dad and
his first son(her former husband) so I don't know if that it is or
if it is just that this past year I've come across so many things of
his...notes, cards...in going thru mom's things that his death seems
more recent this year. It is hard anymore anyway to gloss over the
day we buried him as it was now a date that has become nationally
infamous: Sept 11th. That date just seems to be a day of loss in
many levels.
So...don't know for sure why but this year is harder and the
memories that are coming back this year are the hard ones...the
memories from a child's eye of seeing a Dad sick, a Dad that didn't
remember her anymore just hours before he died, the hospital
scenes...everything that makes the remembering hard. God will take
me thru it as He always does and perhaps this is a way of Him
bringing healing to some of those memories and reconciliation inside
me of all that happened. I don't know but I thought maybe some of
those who struggle with fresher memories need to know that even
those of us who seem "old" our grief still understand the feelings
and the questions and the need to turn it all over and over again to
God for help and healing and that God never ever in the 37 years
since Dad died has told me to stop bugging Him about this need.
Betty
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