I remember the heavy woolen blankets we slept under in a Berber village years ago during our year in Morocco. They were so heavy - and we needed so many layers to stay warm - that we could barely breathe! The floor was hard beneath us and we huddled together for warmth. Eventually we warmed up under the layers of the sheep's wool, woven, rug-like blankets, only to wake up intermittently throughout the night at the unfamiliar sounds.
That memory came to mind recently as I was struggling to breathe under the heaviness of my mourning. It is almost physical, this weight on my chest, and I find myself struggling to get air. I want to throw off the blankets but am unable to - as if in a dream when you try to fight back and can´t move. All my movements are slow and labored. This sorrow is now part of the weaving of my life.
Sometimes the weight lifts for a time - I don´t know why or how - and there is a certain clarity and lightness and energy. Those are times to be enjoyed and to take advantage of. Soon, though, the blankety weight returns and my movement slows, the light recedes, my thinking clouds and the heavy sadness sits down again with all its weight.
I am trying to last the night under this weight. Thankfully, God sits here with me. He doesn´t say much but I know He´s there. We are waiting together for the day to dawn. We are waiting for morning under these wooly & woven blankets of mourning. He breathes for me. He waits with me. He sits. And we wait under wool together...in mourning, for the morning.
Photo by: Ellen, Moroccan Textures
Yes , in waiting we join you. Thank you for reminding us of our companion while waiting. And I am so sorry for your loss, for all of you. We remember with you.
ReplyDeleteIt was at Laurie's New Years eve party last year that Sue suddenly lost her strength in her legs, and began her last 70 days bedridden days of this life. I happen to be sick in bed with headcold these past 3 days, have felt very cold a lot of the time and have been pretty down and moody. Grief comes in so many shapes and sizes, but your likening of it to a heavy blanket is helpful for me. I am already so much farther from those final days, emotioinally, and have been reliving the younger years, happier years, and grieving those these past few months. Now I am suddenly back in the final, days of certainty that the end was near. It is time to cuddle closer to Jesus in these cold hours before dawn. We have been here before. We will make it to morning. We will be here again. But his comfort and presence is even more certain than the dawn.
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