Owning and Letting Go of Grief
From my journal on Sunday afternoon, December 4, 2022
Sunday School and church were good this morning. Sunday School was about the suffering in our lives and how to respond to it, and in a sense church, in my words, was about our calling to reach out to those who are suffering which I heard as a call for me to get serious about finishing my new book. Somewhere in those two conversations I realized that in a very real sense my inactivity problem is my way of grieving my loss of Winnie and I need to own up to that, especially to the Sunday School class, but also to others on turning around. I wish I could say that the two things are not connected, but I see clearly now that they are definitely connected. I think that writing about that will help me let it go and get back to work. What I heard, especially in the church service and Jim's sermon, but really in Sunday School as well, was that the sitting for hours in the living room, where I sat so much while Winnie was sick was clearly a form of grieving for her loss, and that it is time to for me let it go and get back to living my life. Interestingly while Winnie was sick and even after she passed I never got to where i could write in my journal in the living room and I still can’t really. I always have to go in either my office or in my bedroom to do that and thus I seldom wrote in my journal, another sign that the sitting was related to Winnie's passing.
That insight really forms another awakening for me that is very powerful. Sitting in my office now working on this post is the very beginning of that transition.
