My Therapy

Rachel has had a few really great days.  She has been so strong.  I think I am doing alot better too - there has been alot more light in my life lately, literally.  Thank-you God for blue skies and sunshine!  Yesterday morning I sat with the kids in the sunshine while they colored paper scarecrows for the sandbox (to scare the cats away - Ethan's idea) - and I knitted, and I felt some of the joy creep back into my soul.  I think I started this doll sweater just after Christmas and I gave up after making a silly mistake.  It felt really good to be doing this again.  Even last night when I felt this really bad flu bug coming on, I kept knitting away.  Someone told me recently how her counselor had advised her to do a mental activity, like sudoku or crossword puzzles - because this can help break the cycle of our sad thoughts.  I find knitting to work a bit like that.  It's so therapeutic for me sometimes.  

"Dolly, you need to spend a few minutes thinking about what you did wrong.  I don't want to see you coloring your body with marker again...."

There are sweat pants to match....maybe I'll get those done by next Christmas?:)


Speaking of therapy for pain....I have been chewing over something I read in my devotional yesterday.  Maybe I'll just paste it in here:

"The week after Hope died, I was sitting on the couch reading a book by a man who had lost a child.  He wrote, "There's only one thing I've found that helps with the pain." You would have thought I was in the desert and he was telling me where to find water.  I wanted to skip ahead.  I wanted to know.  What is it that will soothe this enormous ache inside me? Then I read it: "serving others." Honestly, I felt disappointed.  That's it? I thought.  A part of me said he was just a preacher who was giving me the party line.  But I also thought that someone who has hurt like he had hurt would not lie to me about where to find comfort.  And so even though I didn't really believe him, I decided to put what he said to the test. I was desperate." Nancy Guthrie


And so Nancy did put it to the test.  She helped a widow move into a new home - and her focus moved from her own pain to someone else's.  She said that in her own experience - it is the reaching out to others in the midst of our own pain, uniquely because of our pain that is the secret to lightening our unbearable load. I feel like maybe I should add a disclaimer.  Grieving people need to be given ALOT of GRACE.  As a people pleaser, and as a firstborn who wants to do everything right - even grieve properly, I can easily succumb to false guilt that I am not doing this right or doing enough for others.  But there is something in this story that rings so TRUE.  In fact, I know this to be true in my own life. What about you?  Has this also been your experience?