A Different Me: Two Years After Losing My Son

Burying my son has tenderized me.
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Woman Traveler with Backpack hiking in Mountains with beautiful summer landscape on background mountaineering sport lifestyle concept
Woman Traveler with Backpack hiking in Mountains with beautiful summer landscape on background mountaineering sport lifestyle concept

I'm not the same me I was two years ago.

I no longer look with confidence down the driveway as friends and family pull away, certain that we will see one another soon.

I whisper, "Be safe" when we part, but know that they are not the keeper of their days and that "being safe" doesn't mean everyone escapes deadly peril.

I don't have the luxury of emotional distance when I read the newspaper anymore.

I can't watch the text scroll by on CNN or FoxNews and allow my eyes and heart to glaze over as numbers representing lives flash by.

Burying my son has tenderized me.

My mind drifts effortlessly and immediately to the ones left behind any time there is mention of a murder or a suicide or an accident.

And my spirit rejoices when a heroic rescue uncovers someone buried in the rubble or a passerby stops to help a person who otherwise faced certain doom.

Second chances make me cry happy tears.

I have higher tolerance for the failures of others and lower tolerance for hatefulness and unkindness.

Maybe I'm just tired, but I find it easier to extend grace than to fuel anger.

I don't care what latest or greatest movie, TV show, fashion fad or IPhone App has just been released-ads for a better, bigger, newer anything don't entice me.

Don't try to draw me into drama or worry or hand-wringing over politics or social media or foolish disputes. There is no part of my heart with room for that.

I will exhaust myself loving others but not on loving things.

I'm a pilgrim and a stranger on this earth. I'm walking a path in a foreign land, looking forward to my heavenly home.

"By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations--the City designed and built by God."

Hebrews 11:8-10 MSG

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