The Interesting Thing About Grief....

I have been grieving the past 10 months. Grieving over loss - loss of our home, loss of our old routine, loss of familiar, loss of eventually, Sioux Falls.  This includes all of our friends, family, church home, etc.  The interesting thing about grief is it can come out of no where.  I remember one day being at a Hy-Vee on the opposite side of town from where we have lived.  {Remember, we moved into an apartment on the OTHER side of town?}  And, I just wanted to cry because my old, familiar Hy-Vee was gone.  Silly, I know, but grief.  Hits out of no where.  Things like that have been happening a lot on this journey.  Things I didn't think I would grieve over, I have.

I'm also finding that the old "coping mechanisms" I used to hide or squelch the grief aren't as effective as they used to be.  I used to be able to think about something happy, something I was excited for, something that would take my feelings off of my true feelings/emotions at the time.  Ya, tried that during our last worship service at church.  It didn't work.  I had to feel the grief. The sorrow.  The sadness of loving these people we have known for less than 2 years and poured into, as they have poured into us, to know we won't be seeing them as often anymore.  The pain of loss.  It stinks, friends, it does.

I think the hardest thing about this move {we have moved around A LOT, as you may know!} is that for the longest time it felt so uncertain where and when we would be going somewhere.  We knew it was coming, but the details were unclear.  When you don't know when or what is coming next, there's not much to be excited about.  When you're not excited about the next thing because it's unknown, you have to feel the feelings about the present situation.  My old coping mechanism was to be so excited about the new house.  I would look online, start decorating, arranging furniture, planning ahead to avoid the feelings I was feeling.  I would also look up information on preschools, churches, everything I could so that I could not feel the sadness associated with the loss of community we were leaving.

But this time, I couldn't do that.  I had to sit in the unknown for so long and just feel the sorrow.  Feel the grief, feel the pain.  Yuck. Even now, since I'm going "home," I don't need to do all that research. So, again, I sit with the feelings.  Grief is hard, y'all.  But, I do know once we move, get settled, find a church, etc. the community component will come.  Thank goodness for technology so we can keep connected to those we are leaving behind in Sioux Falls.  But it still hurts and grief is still hard.