Lost and Found
Grateful to have once again found my lost voice, I realize that it was stilled by grief . . . yet again! I honestly do get that life is a journey – a daily walk of learning and practicing how to continue onward in love rather than in sadness and fear – but I lose sight of that important truth sometimes. It is September after all.
My son’s death date was a week ago. I don’t know about you, but for me, some experiences seem never to grow old, or shrink, or dwindle into nothing, but remain in a variety of ways ever-present in my life. Many are utterly joyful . . . and a few, profoundly sad. In either case, I find myself reliving them, seemingly in the same space and time as when they were first experienced. As the calendar turns toward Septembers, Matt’s death date plus reminisces of its inevitable fallout, sometimes fill that space for me.
Just days ago I returned to something I had found when I was writing my book, “Finding Grace, journeys of grief, courage and healing”. I began this book’s first essay, ‘the call of Grace’, with these words from Rabindranath Tagore:
“I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing
remains unsung.”
Tagore’s poignant lines describe how I feel during those days when my voice, cultivated through years of practiced hope and innumerable meditations on love and acceptance, can still lose itself in soundless darkness. All those days I’ve sought how to more lovingly deal with grief can slide to the side in a “who cares” moment when my heart falls in on itself. It’s then that my voice – my purpose for speaking – lies bewildered and muddled, and grace, ‘the song I came to sing,’ remains unsung.
Gratefully, history and lots of mind and heart work have given me some hard-won pieces of wisdom about wholeness, healing and finding what’s lost. Here’s what I understand as my truth: I will always be a recovering griever and some days will be more quiet and dark than others; and, those same days will also arrive with the offer of grace, balance, love and beauty for the taking.
From my own “Finding Grace”:
“Ways to mend our lives into one of recovery exist within the paradox gaps we are brave enough to recognize, enter and confront. They hover in those ‘both-and’ spaces where the grief of the known encounters the grace of the possible. They are the wisdom that call us to wholeness, that remind us to be truthful, gentle and fearless as we enter fully into our own healing. They are the whispers of Grace.”
May you be at peace, hearing and following the loving whispers of grace, as you journey onward.
Jane
