This is all new to me....blogging, sharing, grieving, loss. It is my prayer, that by writing my thoughts, even if no one but me reads them, I can give a voice to my broken heart, and that in turn may help it heal. I have had many losses in my life but they have always been balanced by the many blessings in my life. The day my family buried my father, my first child was born. The year we buried my precious brother-in-law, I found the love of my life. The year my husband was stricken with a catastrophic illness, my son married his beautiful wife. The year my son died...my already bruised heart broke. That was last year....just six short months ago. Two weeks ago, my beautiful granddaughter Abigail was born...and she is a blessing. But for the first time in my life, I can not seem to get past the pain, past the lost, past the grief. I am not swallowed by it....I can still smile at the sheer joy of watching my grandchildren, I am still touched every time my husband or one of my children or grandchildren say "I love you" with an inflection in their voice that lets me know that they really mean it, I can still laugh at that which is absurd or silly or funny....but always, there is the sorrow just below the surface....waiting for that memory that will bring the tears flowing from my eye. I am struggling with God's purpose and plan for my life...yet even now, I am confident that He will reveal them to me in His perfect time. If he was a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief, and I desire to be like Him, why should I question the purpose of sorrow and grief in my own life....surely it is the path to Him...and truly that is where I want to go....to Him. He will never leave me or forsake me...He has promised...and it is so. So perhaps, one day, I will be able to embrace this sorrow, in order that I might see the world through not my tear filled eyes, but through His tear filled eyes, and on that day, I am quite sure that his plan and purpose for my grief will be clear.