Proverbs 16:24 “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”
In those first months after the death of my daughter, I found myself desperate to find a safe place to talk about how I was feeling. I felt like I was losing my sanity and struggling to make it through the next moment of this indescribable pain I was in. I felt myself slowly slipping into a place of despair. In my search I found there was no place ready to deal with a person like me. Here in the desert and the heat, doors close and people go on vacation. I remember my husband saying, “I wish my grief could go on a vacation!” When I felt I was holding on by a thread, I received a call from a woman who was going to start a group for moms who had lost a child. I finally felt like this might be a place of relief. This mom was not a professional; she was just a woman like me who had lost her son. That was sixteen years ago. She often tells me it was like the blind leading the blind.
In my blind eyes, she offered to me so much. She was someone who had been walking on this road longer than I had. So whatever view of that road I was on, did not seem quite as scary with her showing me the way. She opened her heart to share her brokenness and listened as we shared our brokenness with her. She offered encouragement that we too could survive whatever tragedy we were walking through and she listened without judgment. She offered me that safe place I was looking for and I am forever grateful to her. Do you have someone who has helped you through your dark times? I encourage you to thank them and let them know how much opening their heart to you has meant. I also want to encourage you to open up your broken heart to someone else. We might feel like my friend, the blind leading the blind, but you might be the very one who can help them see.
Lord, we all feel sometimes like the blind leading the blind in this grief journey, but we always know You will lead us.
-- Michele
