7 Posts in 7 Days: Put On Love

I experienced a loss once. It was the kind of loss that causes one to mark all events as "before" or "after" itself, forevermore. It was untimely, unexpected, and life changing. My joys will never again be unmoderated by it.

By Pethrus (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

People came. I don't remember what they said, but I remember that they were there and they said it. I have no memories of the year that followed. There was only a heavy black blanket of grief. Then, one day, I looked out my kitchen window and saw blossoms on the trees. It wasn't the blossoms that arrested me; it was the seeing. I was seeing for the first time in about a year.

Then, life went on. I really didn't want it to, but you really don't get a choice. You go on because there is no alternative. If dying is not an option, you must live.

Grief is like the labor of childbirth -- in reverse. The pains get farther apart, and less intense, but they go on as long as life does. And you live. There are loved ones who need you, and you live.

By Scott Bauer, U.S. Department of Agriculture [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Days pile upon days and become stacked up years of living. The ones who noticed your grief and reached inside and touched you in the living -- you remember, because they brought peace.

This I know:
In spite of the fact that we'd like to think differently, we don't have control over much in this life. But we can love. No one-- nothing at all-- can steal or control our ability to love, and love breathes life into the living and makes it good.

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

~Colossians 3:14

Pax Christi dear ones,
May you love and be loved,
~Michelle

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