lose/lose situation.

last week was jam-packed... attending christmas parties, throwing christmas parties, finding those last few christmas gifts, cleaning for then hosting the in-laws, loving on our friends taking finals and our friends having a baby... all on top of just normal life stuff. and for whatever reason, i just felt kind of heavy all week. it wasn't a bad week at all, it was actually full of fun things, but my heart was just heavy.

somewhere in the week (maybe tuesday?) i found myself procrastinating and playing on the internet... clicking from link to link, blog to blog... and somehow i ended up on this girl's blog {i mean, we're talking like a friend of a friend of a friend kind of situation}. she and her husband lost their one-year-old son completely unexpectedly a few months ago. while grieving a dad and grieving a son are two very different things, her writing was all too familiar. i remember having such similar thoughts and feelings a few years ago. don't get me wrong, i still grieve, but it's more of an every now and then thing than the every minute thing she's still walking in.

now, you're going to think i'm crazy, but as i read her writing, something in me missed that pain -- that it-hurts-so-bad-i-feel-like-i-can't-breathe pain. weird, i know, but i think what i mean is that i miss how fresh it all was, because sometimes now it seems so distant. just in case you don't believe me, here's an example -- again, from last week (i told you it was quite a week). thursday would have been my parents' 32nd anniversary. now, this is the sixth december 13th we've had since dad died, and the previous five weren't easy. it's just always been one of those dates that threw in my face the fact that my dad was gone, my parents' marriage was over, my family was no longer the picture-perfect little family that i naively used to think we were, and that my mom was experiencing more pain than i could ever imagine. so what about this year? december 13th came and went, and their anniversary didn't even cross my mind one time! WHAT?! i know it's just a date on a calendar, and i know that my brother probably wouldn't have remembered their anniversary even if dad were still here, but dates have always been a big deal to me, so a couple days later when i realized i had completely forgotten it, i was absolutely stunned -- not even like overwhelmed with sadness, but like utterly shocked.

do i wish i still felt like i couldn't breathe because of the pain everyday? i guess not, because those were hard days that i don't ever want to live through again... but forgetting things like their anniversary (as silly as that may seem) makes me feel like i'm forgetting him and i can't even handle that feeling. just typing that makes me feel a little bit nauseous. 

oh grief, you are such a terrible lose/lose situation. you are such a reminder that this world is broken, but thankfully not our home forever. you are such a reminder that i am completely incapable of mustering up hope, peace, joy, and love on my own... such a reminder that i am desperate need of the savior whose coming we celebrate this time of year.