Shattered to Pieces
Picture this… A girl is traveling through the Atlanta airport and spots a handsome young man at her gate. Everyone boards and somehow that young man is seated next to her. He strikes up a conversation. They giggle and nod in response to each other’s questions and stories. That conversation leads to a romantic first date in New York City, late night facetime dates when traveling for work, and stolen kisses between sunsets. The girl starts to fall for the young man, and the young man starts to fall for the girl. Classic movie beginning.
Soon enough sleepovers become less about sleep and more about worry when the girl notices the man she adores is having night terrors and getting up throughout the night, never coming back to bed. She gets concerned but doesn’t bring it up knowing that the wars he fights in his dreams are as real as the wars he has fought in real life. Being Delta Force and deployed 6 times took its toll and she knew that from the first date walking New York streets, passing the World Trade Center memorial, and listening to him share his stories. The stories he recounted for her spilling out, every syllable spoken as heavy as a weight being dropped in water.
After a long personal trip, he comes home, and the girl sleeps over for much needed time together. She is reluctant to leave in the morning after so long apart and lingers a few extra minutes with his head in her lap, moving a hand through his hair and smiling at how lucky they are to have found each other. She eventually leaves with a few sweet kisses to his forehead and pads off down the hall, thoughts of him and her, and their future together, running through her mind. She leaves never assuming that would be the last time she would look upon his beautiful face again.
A few weeks go by and she doesn’t hear from him after leaving his loft that morning. Confusion and worry take the place of happiness, and thoughts of their future are replaced with questions of what could have happened. And she is in her apartment when all the sudden she feels a loss of a loved one in her soul. She feels as if a part of her heart is all the sudden gone. She can’t explain it other than it feels like something has fluttered away from its home. The next day lying in bed, she comes across a post with pictures of him. The caption stating that he took his own life and that the world would miss him... She rereads the caption over and over again, and stares at the phone in disbelief, tears starting to well in her eyes and aches forming in her chest. Emotion takes over and all she can do is scream and cry, starting to fall into the darkness. She can’t get ahold of anyone that knew him to explain what is going on. If it was real. If he really did take his own life. No one will call her back with answers, so she is left to draw her own conclusions until the obituary is posted and confirms her nightmare, confirms that sudden feeling of loss a few mornings before.
The funeral is just as horrid, the closed casket enough to suffocate her, watching as they lower him into the dirt. He is gone, never to hold her, never to kiss her, and never to fit that future she molded in her head and felt so surely about in her heart. She is left broken, heart spilling out onto the depthless pit she now finds herself in. She is left broken for his family, his friends, his brothers and sisters in the service. And she is left broken in the faith she was holding onto so strongly, up until this point.
She crumbles into all-consuming grief…
That is a very real part of my story. That is one of the puzzle pieces in my picture. That was almost three years ago and still today, telling the story brings me to my knees.
Emotions and grief have been taking hold of me again lately. The demons I wrestled with coming back to find me. The worst part being that I have let them. Welcoming them like old friends instead of keeping my eyes on God. Welcoming them instead of reminding myself that letting the light in is so much more filling than letting the pain consume me. For a long time, I let that part of my story become my identity, became all I was. The new lens in which I saw the world. The new foundation on which I built my next chapter and the next puzzle piece in the story of my life. It turned me into someone that saw what happened as partially God’s fault. Why didn’t He save Greg? Why didn’t He help heal Greg’s mind before it was too late? Why didn’t He put it on Greg’s heart to ask for help? Scream for help? Why didn’t He give me the feeling of urgency to talk to Greg about the night terrors? And the reality is that that isn’t who God is. That was not what God wanted for his life. That is not what God wanted for us either. But at the time, my anger towards God, and Greg, was eating me from the inside out, twisting me into someone I didn’t even recognize.
And even now, knowing God’s character more than ever before, I find myself bouncing around emotions of grief again. I don’t have anger towards God anymore, I know wholeheartedly that what happened wasn’t God’s choice for our lives, or for his family and friends lives. But that doesn’t mean the emotions and hurt aren’t always there, staring at me from the depths of a pit that I have crawled out of, doing their best to grab my wrist and pull me back in.
At the beginning of my grief journey, I thought that over time my grief would just get smaller, that I would work through the emotions, see a grief counselor, and within a year without him be “okay” again. Well, let me tell you, that is so far from the truth. Three years later I bounce from disbelief, to bartering, to anger in one hour. I feel sorrow, frustration, peace, and longing all at once. I sometimes daydream that he just needed to disappear for safety, and I’ll find him waiting on my doorstep. He’ll hold me and explain to me what happened. He’ll be home with me once more.
Is that healthy? Probably not, and my grief counselor would probably like to talk about that if she reads this. But I can’t help it. I can’t help but hold onto that future I had created in my mind for us. I grieve him just as much as I grieve the life I imagined. And that is almost worse. I know he isn’t coming back. I know I won’t find him on my doorstep one day. I watched them put dirt over his grave. But, to lose and move on from that life I pictured with him feels like letting go of him completely. It feels like I wouldn’t be honoring him and what we meant to each other. And that crushes me. It crushes me to think of not honoring the man I adored so much, for so many reasons. And at the same time, I know it isn’t true. I know Greg would want me to grow and find love again. I know he watches over me from Heaven, probably giving God tips on what the man I marry needs to be like.
I will always miss him. I will always wish he wouldn’t have worn a mask over the pain. I will cry about the time we will never get back. I will also smile at the sky when something reminds me of a happy memory we shared. Because grief is not linear. There is no timeline. There is no “right” path. Grief never truly goes away. Grief isn’t just a handful of bottles that you line up and shoot down one by one. It’s more like dropping a piece of pottery. After being shattered, we do our best to put all the pieces back together to somehow make ourselves whole again and make sense of what happened. Without help, without God, how far can we get? How much can we truly heal ourselves when we don’t see the whole picture? When we don’t see how everything fits together six, ten, twenty, puzzle pieces from now? And that’s just it isn’t it? We don’t see how the puzzle pieces fit together. But God does. If you let Him in, He will put you back together with grace and truth. And when a piece falls out and shatters again, He will pick it back up and gently work to mold it into something stronger.
The scars will always be there, the emotions will alway be there, but with God, the pieces will become a whole piece again. Stronger this time because it wasn’t you doing your best to put yourself back together. Stronger this time because you finally handed over your brokenness, and He gently and lovingly helped you mold the circumstance to create the person He intended you to be. Stronger this time because you trust Him with what hurts the most.
Even in the darkest moments, God is ready to catch you. Ready to give you love. Ready to help you put the pieces back together no matter how many times they shatter. And ready to take the beating when you blame Him for something that wasn’t His doing or His wish for your life. He understands. He wants to be your source of strength. And, He is waiting for you with open arms.
May His peace find you wherever you are, and may you find the courage to surrender your grief so He may put the pieces together again.
After all, don’t we all want to feel whole?
Confidently,
Katey
