Finding a New Normal

Death and I know each other quite well.  We have met on many occasions in my short life and, in the past few years, we have finally come to an understanding.  At least I think we have.  I know that death is never an easy thing, regardless of the length and quality of a life lived.  Death knows that I am not afraid of him.  I don't like death, but I've interacted with death enough to know that it shouldn't be scary.

There's a tricky side to death, though, in that death changes a lot more lives than we think.  Death doesn't just come for the person who is dying, death also comes for their family and for their friends and issues a challenge - find a new normal and keep living, or be consumed by me.  

Finding a new normal isn't easy.  It means doing the difficult work of casting off the sackcloth and ashes and stepping out into the daylight having found a way of honoring grief that helps you keep going each day.  It means that, when the cycle of grief does come around again, we can greet it with the attention and honor it deserves, and then move on with our day or week or month or year (let's be honest, sometimes grief needs to be honored for more than a moment).  It also means carrying a spirit around with you that isn't physically present in this life, a spirit that can often cause us to wonder what would have been if that loved one had not died.  

I wondered, a couple weeks ago, what our life would be like if I hadn't miscarried...would we have chosen to find out the sex of the baby?  would we have finally selected names by now?  what would his/her nursery look like at this moment?  how would we be preparing Ellie to be a big sister?  

Part of the pain surrounding pregnancy loss is that parents can only wonder what could have been.  Our lives and the lives of the children we lost only intersected in this life for a little while, and often in a way that doesn't cause too much disruption in our day to day lives. But they intersected for long enough that hopes and dreams for that child and his/her life had already been formed.  And in death, hopes were dashed and dreams were crushed. Yet, we must still keep on living. Things went back to normal after our miscarriage.  But at the same time, they didn't.  Chris and I found ourselves trying to maneuver into a new normal in which we could honor our grief while continuing to navigate parenting in the midst of toddlerhood.  Like a dear friend said about the loss of his son "I have come to peace with his loss, and life goes on, but I wish he were here."   

As we walk through life,  it is full of new normals, be they a new job, a new life entering the family, a new house, a new routine after a job has been lost or a medical diagnosis has been made, and those new normals shape who we are.  Death is the most permanent of changes that causes a new normal to be necessary.  But we know that it is possible to find life in the midst of death.  That in the midst of death new normals that allow us to not just live, but thrive, are possible.  We know this because we have seen it happen.  Because we have lived it for ourselves.  As a Christian, I know it can be done because I have heard the promises of scripture.  I have heard the scriptural witness of the disciples trying to find a new normal after Christ's death only to find Christ living within that new normal.  I have heard the witness of the of the resurrection and have seen it for myself in little miracles and in big ones, and I believe that the promises of the resurrection are there for you and for me.