Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
A friend of mine sent me this article based on the aging process. As I read it I thought to myself this also sounds like our mind when we find ourselves in deep grief. This article describes a day in an aging person. Everything today is considered a disorder and has letters that represent the cause. This one is called, Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder or A.A.A.D.D. As I read this I thought it sounded a lot like me in my grief. When we age we lose memory and concentration but gain wisdom. In our grief we lose our memory and concentration and gain wisdom! See if you recognize yourself in this story in your grief.
I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start towards the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mailbox earlier and I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice the can is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first. But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my checkbook off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in the desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find a can of Coke I’d been drinking. I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to set the Coke aside so I don’t accidentally knock it over. The Coke is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.
As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye- they need water. I put the Coke on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I’ll be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it is on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.
I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day: The car isn’t washed, the bills aren’t paid, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, the flowers don’t have enough water, there is still only 1 check in my checkbook. I can’t find the remote, I can’t find my glasses, and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys! Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I am really baffled because I know I was busy all stinking day, and I am really tired……
I remember after the loss of my daughter feeling scattered. I could not concentrate on anything. I truly thought I was going crazy! I asked my doctor why I found it hard to gather my thoughts together; even doing daily tasks was a challenge. He told me that we have been dealt a terrible shock. Our brains are only capable of handling certain information at the same time. My thoughts during that time were trying to comprehend the death of my daughter. There was no room in my head to put any other thought in there. I was not going crazy I was grieving. I was suffering from EABH Disorder (Empty Arms Broken Heart Disorder). There is but one cure for this disorder. It is to spend every waking moment relying on the Lord, praying, crying out and sitting in the quietness of His comforting arms. It is a disorder that can be cured and we will once again find our brain. That is unless you go right into AAADD. No cure for that one!
– Michele
