Distracted Grief

Emotions are hard.  I can't believe I'm actually writing that. I've always been a person very in tune with my feelings; I can feel my emotions and sometimes I even try to feel the emotions of people around me, although, I asure you, I have learned that's not really a good idea.  So, navigating this journey through my mom's illness has been extremely weird.  Things and people and family dynamics, they all get in the way of me being able to process all of my emotions, and then I'm just left going, "what is happening, here?"

I know I'm terribly sad, I know I'm angry and exhausted and confused and crushed, but why can't I let it out somewhere?  Why is that when I'm ready to cry my eyes out,
I don't feel anything?  Why is it that when my husband wants to spend time talking and sharing, I'm just done thinking about things?  How is it that when I finally break down on a friends' shoulder, immediately my two year old has climbed on top of a very high table and I'm rushed out of that moment as quickly as it descended upon me?

I guess I'm learning that while a lot of me wants to feel the grief and sadness, there is more of me that thinks it might be easier to distract my feelings and spend energy feeling hurt and angry at my siblings or my dad for how they're handling this journey.  That sounds awful, but truly, family dynamics are seriously amplified during times of family crisis and I have found myself clearly back in the role of the oldest, responsible one and it is irritating and hurtful and frustrating.  But, I don't want to be feeling anger at my family, I want to be hurting with them.  I have to believe that the evil one has had a whole lot of practice in how to distract God's people from handling their hurts.  He is tempting me to lash out at the only ones who know exactly how I feel instead of engaging with them or caring for them.

When my mom was first in the hospital and still very sick, she told me that she thinks that God is using her cancer for a reason.  Later, after she was recovering from her first round of chemo, I asked her what she thought some of those reasons might be.  She told me that she thinks God wants to use it to draw her closer to Him, that she may want to get re-baptized. She told me that she thinks He wants to use it to strengthen their marriage.  She said she believes he wants our family to grow closer together.

I am having a hard time finding the space in my home, with my children and husband to feel the emotions I have right now.  Life is still busy, the laundry still waits, the dishes still sit unwashed; how can I take the time to sit and cry when I feel it overwhelming me?  But, I guess I'm realizing that if I don't engage with the scary feelings of grief and fear, seeking the Lord to comfort me during delicate moments, then I will inevitably find a way to cover those feelings with Satan's temptations to be jealous, or angry or selfishly resentful.  If I can sit at His feet and let him care for me, then maybe I'll be able to sit with my family and we can share about how we're all doing, because I'll have actually engaged in those emotions myself and allowed myself to be cared for by the only One who can.  And if I know that He's the only one that can handle my hurts, then hopefully I'll remove myself from the role of thinking that it's my job to care for everyone in my family.