Posting with Lisa Jo Baker over at Five Minute Friday today.
Today’s theme: Nothing.
Really? “Nothing”?
Like… I have nothing to say?
I have nothing left?
I am nothing without you?
I feel… nothing?
My husband and I said goodbye to a dear friend yesterday. He was 43. Beautiful wife. Three boys. He was a blonde dynamo, a hiker, camper, fisherman. A firefighter. Strong and full of joy. Full to the brim with LIFE, I tell you. A BIG Life – the kind with a capital L. All the pictures of him at the funeral – he was on mountains or in kayaks or grinning from airplane cockpits.
Or kissing on his babies.
And cuddling his wife, my sweet friend.
And all I can feel today is… nothing. I am all felt out.
Grief does that. It pulls you out like a rubber band, until you can’t take the tension anymore and then you snap back. Tired and spent. Wrung out.
And I kinda see the grief as selfish – it’s not my husband. Not my life. Not my suddenly empty bed and echoing future. But the grief is still there, snapping me back, a rubber band’s sting against the skin. The grief – I look at my boys, at my sweet, tall, blonde husband, and stop to take a breath, almost panicked, at this seemingly fickle existence that I have… at all my blessings.
And of course, too, I miss my brother all the more.
Emptied out.
Grief is all around right now. And yet, I go to the store. Take the boys to the pool. Fix meals and put on band aids, and keep going. Just keep going. And feel the guilt of it every once in a while. Here we are, at the pool, running about and celebrating our sunny day, when just three blocks over, is such pain and sorrow.
I am emptied out.
I have nothing I can give. My friend – she has nothing to do right now but allow Jesus to be with her.
And all I can think is – the cracks and nothingness, the emptiness, the gaping holes where pain lives … they are there to be filled.
So we try to fill them, with play dates and casseroles and texts and some really bad brownies I baked for them…
But mainly –
We pray.
That’s the best Nothing fighter I know.
Dana Bowman 
Oh, my dear friend who I’ve never even met in person…you can’t begin to know how this post is working me over right now. How could God have put all the pieces together knowing this was exactly what I needed to read at this precise minute? He’s something else….
clicking over from FMF – Grief is a hard thing. I’ve been in that place, all felt out, that hollowness of grief before the next round. I’m sorry for your loss, for your friend’s loss, for those children’s loss. Joining you in prayer.
Thank you. Been a tough time here. Such comfort in the community of this silly blog!!
Wow. I struggled with writing it b/c I knew i just wouldn’t be able to really do it justice. And didn’t want to wax on about how sad i am. But i am sad. So it’s ok. So THANK YOU for responding. God is an awesome God and is in ALL of it. hugs.
So true. It occurred to me after his last night that we are very truly a vapor as the Word tells us. We are nothing apart from God. Nothing apart from Him is lasting.