This year marks seven years since my mother passed away.
My mom lived with cancer for seven years. I have lived seven years without my mother. During my adolescence my mother was sick. For the majority of my adulthood I have been motherless.
Grief is a different sickness than cancer, but it is still a battle one has to go through. You can’t fight it. There is no winning. You have to go through it.
The Bible nerd in me can’t help but realize seven is the number of perfection. If suffering was my mother’s trial, it was according to God’s perfect timing. My seven year trial has been sorrow. I realize I am by no means perfect and that I will continue to miss my mother after this seven year mark, but my grief has changed and I have changed as a result. I am no longer in the valley.
Grief has taught me how to surrender. You have to lean on God and walk through the pain. I would not be at this place of healing if I had to do it alone. God was with me every step of the way.
I remember when my mother died, eternity became more real for me. But I also remember praying that one day God would be more real to me than my grief for my mother. Yes, I still look forward to the day when we will see each other again. But more and more I am looking forward to being with my Savior forever.
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever”
(Psalm 73:25–26)
Seven years after my mom’s death, I’ve learned to need her less and to need God more. I am learning how to love my mother rightly and depend fully upon God. The Lord who was so near my mom during her trial is, by the grace of God, closer to me today.
I love this quote on grief:
“Grief over any good thing, including any good relationship, points us Godward. Grief hurts deeply because we are aware of just how good a gift God had given us . . . The anguish we feel when we lose things we love implicitly declares God’s goodness in having given them. Our grief, then, can become the cry ‘Maranatha,’ come Lord Jesus, and make this broken world whole” (Untangling Emotions, J. Alasdair Groves and Winston T. Smith).