cocoons....

i was replying to an email from a friend today and found myself capturing how i have felt lately which i didn't think i could describe before but found the words and i guess this is a good start....hope it's ok that i share a bit of the conversation from my side....

"i am not too much of a help right now i
suppose....trying to stay afloat each day without
sinking back to the darkness that is so familiar to
me...it is more familiar and eerily comfortable than
some old friends if you can imagine that...safe
somehow, even it's quiet despair...not sure how to
live outside that cocoon that i have made for myself
this past 6 months....some days i am just fine feeling
stuck in there bc at least thoughts of her are still
with me...images, smells and such..life before she
died is in there....but the minute i try to live
outside that and "start over" and forge ahead into a
new time and space for myself i feel lonely and empty,
without her and the person i was for so long..life
since she died is out there...i am afraid to see what
that NEW person grief changed me into is like...will i
like her? will others like her? will she make it,
really make it? ..."

how will she find joy? how will she honor her Lord with her life and her choices? how will she adapt to her new world that seems so oddly shaped and unfamiliar, even now with new friends here and some who have disappeared?

ian and i feel we have already lost several friendships, sadly, because of what "d-day" did to us and how that tragedy has formed a chasm between some people in our lives who have checked out and the others who want to remain in our world, as sad as it may be most days...i am trying to be forgiving and give Grace that is needed to let that all go and let people go if they so choose..i guess for some people, grief is too much to be around all the time...maybe it is too dark for their perfect world, maybe it is too uncomfortable for people to have to feel or be close to, maybe it brings up old wounds of their own, maybe the reflection of our fragmented family and painful season doesn't match their rosy happy world that they know and they don't want anything to tarnish their beautiful perfection....who the heck knows? we have learned in our grief group from too many to count that this happens to many families after a death, that some friends will scatter to the ends of the earth to get away from your pain and awkward world you live in.....others will stay close, be silent or outspoken and keep walking with you..even some new strangers become new lifelines and new friendships form..but the old adage that my mom taught me when i was little still comes flooding back when i think of the others....."if they were your true friends, they wouldn't make you feel like that or have left you so alone, so maybe they were never that committed to your friendship in the first place, accept and move on..you can't force something to be that is not..."

either way, either world....transformation happens...like the dragonfly or butterfly's own transformation, it is natural and meant to be and cannot be stopped...or thwarted or manipulated, unless you choose death and you are out of options, but if you chose life...you only have the choice to roll with it and break free from the cocoon and embrace the new creature that grew within the walls of that change...you can't expect a beautiful butterfly to desire or crave the small dark space it just came from with all it's limits and bodily restrictions it had...not now, that she can fly and discover and be free and who is now living to "be and do" all that her Creator designed her for....why go back? that would be unnatural and just plain stupid...

yet, we as humans, with our stupid flesh and selfish desires seem to want to crawl back to that, time and time again where it feels safe, however enslaved to it we become or how many restrictions or limits it puts on us when we keep returning...why do we desire to go back so many times to that dark cocoon when the beauty and freedom that lies ahead is waiting for us?

i don't know how to choose the "forward" part of life right now and not continually be always looking back to that safe little hiding place.....that little cocoon where she and i were once one.