In a barren land...with who knows what lurking in the shadows

I love this woman's description "the grey mud flats."
"It’s when the drama is over and you face the grey mudflats of the future that the real widowhood begins... You don’t ‘get over’ the man, though you do after a year or two get over the death; but you have to learn to live in another country in which you’re an unwilling refugee.” ~Writer and agony aunt Katharine Whitehorn, who lost her husband in 2003 after 45 years of marriage.
It really does feel like being in some barren, alien landscape. The instinct that propels you forward is survival, but without a map I wonder about the many points where you just want to lay down, refuse to go further and be consumed by tentacled beasts just to get out of there. If you know the distance from point A (the land of Used-to-Be) and Point B (land of Adjusted-to-New-Normal) is a certain distance, you at least have a clue as to how many sleepless nights, how many days of struggle. This is like being conscripted to the crew of Columbus' first voyage and having no idea how big that flipping ocean is and what monsters lurk in it.

Psalm 119:50 says:
"My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life." Comforting, but I'm wondering how long the "How long, Lord?"phase is going to be. There is *no* map. David did plenty of the "how long Lord-ing."

27 days since we last spoke, 15 days buried. Might as well be "days adrift at sea" and I am *not* a fan of the ocean.

1 Peter 1:3-9 is a good reminder this morning of the living hope we have in Him. Then there is 1 Chronicles 29:15, "We are here for only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace." At least I can say I will wind up with greater understanding of how the Israelites felt wandering in the desert or being carted off to Babylon against their will. 😐