One month...

One month has passed since you went to be with Jesus and left us all behind. One month of learning to be lonely. A month that feels like it was yesterday and that it has been forever all at the same time.

I've cried. Buckets. Rivers. Oceans.
I've screamed. Punched things - YOUR things.
I've cursed in ways that would make a sailor tell me to wash my mouth out.
I sleep in your shirts, surrounded by the dogs who try to keep me close.

After the initial tearing up things looking for important stuff that you forgot to put back where it belonged, I've left it all a disaster. Your stuff. Everywhere. Heaps of it. I yell at it and I punch it some more when I'm angry at you for going.

I'm mystified by the things you kept, the things you accumulated - and I'm overwhelmed because they make me hurt to see and yet it will hurt to not see them.

I know I told you this would happen for years as I begged, nagged & pleaded for you to take care of yourself the right way- I know this is the worst "I told you so" of my life. I didn't want to be right. I scream that, I cry that - the walls of this house will probably hold those cries forever. I wanted you to listen or to prove me wrong or simply just not die - not at 55. I thought there was time. Don't we always think there is time?

I'm mad at you for leaving, but I'm not mad at God. I won't be mad at God. I mourn for me, for our daughters, for our grandchildren. But God, oh my Father in Heaven, He made sure that this wouldn't be permanent. Way back in 1984 you chose Him and even though this hurts so badly, so painfully, so violently - He called you by name and you are His. So in spite of my grief you are more than okay, you are changed. You're seeing HIM. I know that God doesn't love us less because He took you away.

1 John 3:1-2 "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is."