Anger Will Come

My topics tend to address with what I'm dealing with in my present life. I have one foot in the past and always will. I guess this is what happens when you've lost a child to suicide. And especially when you were there when it happened.

I have to work daily to stay in the present, and it becomes easier. Honest, it does.

What I'm reading right now is Judy Collins's "Sanity and Grace: A Journey of Suicide, Survival, and Strength." I appreciate the quotes she's added from professionals that have studied suicidology. I don't agree with all of them, but I do recommend this book.

Let's touch upon anger. Are you angry at your loved one? Was I ever angry at Josh? You better believe it. Does the anger come and go? At first it came in spurts and wouldn't leave for a time. Now, not so much. It surfaces when I least expect it, but it disappears and I'm left with regret. With an ache to hug my son.

Anger is normal with this loss. Golly, people even feel anger when they lose a spouse to natural causes, so surely we'll feel anger when a loved one takes their own life.

A few thoughts may go like this: What right did he have to leave us this way? Why did she do this? We loved her. Did he love us so little? She was selfish, plain selfish. He's ruined our lives! Why did he not listen to me? I'm his mother, I knew what was best. I've been given a jail sentence that I don't deserve.

Please know I had all these thoughts and many more I can't remember. I felt guilty afterward, but they were what they were.

I remember feeling crazy. I think from lack of sleep and all the sorrow (too much negative and not enough joy). God allowed another mother and my paths to cross at the perfect moment in my life. At the time, she lost her son five years earlier. I told her, "I feel I'm going crazy."

She looked me right in the eyes and said something like this, "I know you do. I did. But, you're not." Her eyes twinkled with a knowing, and I trusted that look more than her words.

I will always be grateful for our mother to mother talk on the green grass of a park on a summer day.

I'm still growing spiritually, which is a relief. Sometimes I wonder if I'll fall off the edge of this physical, spiritual world. God holds out his arms. He walks this harsh, cruel path with me and will never forsake me. I am sure of that. What I'm not sure of is myself. Too many feelings all a jumble, but if I stop and think for one quick second who my Lord God is, I then place my trust back where it belongs. With him.

Philippians 4: 12, "I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." (KJV)

Until next time . . .