The Battle

Here it comes again, that dark cloak of sadness. I am vulnerable. June gloom has arrived and with it the world has turned grey. The ever increasing momentum of the end of school year has very late homework sessions with Nick to rebound from missing an entire week of school due to illness. The sleepless nights of, "I know I am forgetting something" and worrying about everything. The stress of learning a new job and all the mom/wife responsibilities to tend to. All is grey and numb.  I continue on through the motions of life.

At the root of it, I know that June gloom does not fair well with my mood; late nights and little sleep do not aid in clarity, focus and mood, but mostly, it is the cloak of sadness, grief creeping in wishing to consume me that causes me to pause. Reflecting on this thought, as I am a believer in all things good and evil, I determine that Satan and God are in a battle over me, my soul and my family and it is absolutely exhausting. While I have been a believer all my life, I have vacillated from lukewarm to on fire more times than I would like to admit. I am not ashamed of this and I have certainly paid the consequences of those choices time and again. The transformation that has occurred in my spiritual life and the spiritual lives of my family is overwhelming. This reigniting of our commitment to God and to our family has brought such comfort and joy, but also much strife. We have been faced with obstacle upon obstacle and am proud to say that we are staying the course and moving forward.

Then there is grief. That rascal that keeps creeping in when we least expect him. He is not invited, though I allow him to stay. Why fight the inevitable? I allow him in, he shows me things invoking strong emotional reactions. I shed buckets of tears when I thought I had none left to shed. He takes me back in time to feel old feelings of bittersweet love, loss and grief. My daughters, whom I never held in my arms, my college sweetheart taken from me and the world too soon, my innocence stolen, the birth of my precious sons, the diagnosis of Asperger's, the downward spiral and loss of my eldest son to a world of drugs and alcohol, the loss of a dream for my eldest to drive, to be a positive role model for his brothers, to get a job, to graduate high school, to go to college....all lost to him at the moment. Grief, he is cunning. He takes me on a roller coaster ride to nowhere leaving me to find my way back. Back to reality, to sanity and to piece back together what is left of me. Then I walk around almost comfortably numb until he visits again. But God, he is fighting with me and for me. Together, eventually we will win and I will be free.