wheatWe tend to live with our lives and feel our feelings in categories. I am happy. I am sad. I am joyful. I am mourning.

But this past year has been so much more than segments of feelings or times when I can easily answer the offhanded question, “How are you?”

10 months ago we moved. We packed up our beloved home, our gift from God, and left it behind. This is not news to you if you have been following the blog, but at times it feels like news to me. I can be driving down the road from our new house and wonder, “Am I really here? Is this our street now?”

I can pull into my son’s school and wonder why I am not on his old school property.

I walk into a the grocery store and am convinced that a man from our old church is standing by the apples or my best friend is buying some cereal.

I can go through an ordinary day, feel blessed, happy, joyful about our life we now have in Minnesota when suddenly the grief and loss jump up and cause me to stumble. Like this weekend. I had looked forward to celebrating Christ’s resurrection with our new church family, but come Saturday evening I could only think of the old. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with sadness because we were not able to sing or confess or take communion together with those who helped raise our boys for the first 6 years I was a mom. I was not able to lead the church as celebrant and offer Christ’s body and bread to those who hunger for Him. I was not able to be with those who know me in a unique way – ways that our friends and family here have not come close to knowing us.

I love our new church, but right now I miss our church family so much. So we skipped church on Sunday morning – Easter morning of all mornings – in order to remember together all that Christ has done for us. We practiced rejoicing while we grieved.

For those of you in Denver who we left behind, know you are not forgotten. My boys still ask about your kids. We think about you often.

For those of you here in Minnesota, we are grateful for your welcoming love towards us. Please be patient with us as we continue to grieve what we lost when we came here. I know God has given us many blessings on this side of the change. I can still see that, even though I mourn.

That’s the tricky thing with grief. It does not come in a linear fashion. It does not start and end on time and cannot be predicted. Grief does not mean all of life is sad or that we wish things were the way they used to be, just that we have experienced a loss.

And losses are meant to be mourned.