Pain In Loss

What does it take to rid pain? I can bury it beneath the already hidden wounds that are stashed away in my heart just waiting to be dealt with. But then I don’t deal with the pain because, well, it’s painful, unpleasant, and brings such harshness to a numb, but seemingly fine reality. But I feel stranded because each new ache brings up old ones and somehow they are all connected to things that just happened in recent days. I told my brother today that I wanted to dig a hole, climb into it and never come out. This morning I found out that my childhood dog past away last night due to spleen cancer. There have been many, many memories connected to him. His name was Duke! The Grand Duke of Hop Canyon, (the place where my parents live). Many days I would wake up and find Duke just waiting at my bedside for me to get up and pet him. He was that kind of dog, waiting to love us and always was there wanting to play, or go on a walk. He was always there, and now he’s not. One might think that it was just a dog, but not me. He was my dog, our family’s dog, a part of our family. He would always go outside and find large sticks to drag around and collect. Some of them weren’t even sticks but almost as large as tree branches, as he would drag across the yard as his head was bended due to the weight of the branch. My Mom has written a great blog post about him plus she has pictures of him if you want to go check it out. Her blog is (Blog When I Can) it is the second to last blog link on my blog roll! Most of the day I mourned for my Dukey, but while I was crying today, I was reminded of recent pain our family have been going through concerning family relations falling apart. I feel broken and helpless and I just can’t hold it together any more. All of these wounds are connected because each pain ends in a loss. And those losses have taken their tow on my heart. I feel like I have many holes in my heart that are yet to be mended, and I am losing energy to continue. I asked God to help me deal with the pain, and today he grieved with me. He held me and said it was okay to grieve, for that is a part of releasing and accepting what was to what is. Then I thought about what Heaven is going to be like; there won’t be any loss, any grief, pain or past wounds that add up throughout a lifetime, but a God waiting for me to get there to love on me even more when I am in his presence, just like Duke used to wait for me to get up. He will be greatly missed.

Father, please heal the pain and pour your love upon me as I seek your face for comfort and as you help me deal with losses that I have dealt with in my life. I know God that pain is inevitable in this life, but I also know that your love and healing hands are too, and you can use each loss that I have experienced to build and bring me up to be a woman who you call daughter. I love you Papa…