So Far  (A 3 min video begins this post. Simply click the words that proceed the parenthesis),

Sophie has spent nearly 3 years living in heaven.  Her father, big sister and myself have been learning to navigate through grief.  It feels like scaling K2.  The new terrain is unpredictable, dangerous, terrifying, unfamiliar and complicates our souls.  Radically our travels are transforming our family.  We have stumbled upon courage, strength, perserverence, love and joy through the climb.  However, our progress is somewhat stilted, our visibility is randomly obstructed and intermittently we loose ground.  Travel guide authorities we have met while climbing have suggested that our climb through grief is not yet complete.   “Completed? What?  We’re not professional climbers, not even novices!  We have an 8 year old in tow!  We were chosen for this climb but we are totally untrained, uneducated and physically weakened by the circumstances and requirements of this task.  We’re barely putting one foot in front of the other.  Breathing shallow.  Chapped, bruised, bleeding, salt water stings our cheeks.  There are days we slide backwards.  Reaching completion seems totally unattainable?  or is it just unrealistic?”

I think our grieving process will never reach completion until our entire family is reunited, reaching our final destination, together in heaven forever.  Then our climb through grief will be complete.  Until then, navigating our climb through grief may be less intense, there will be moments of discovery, epiphany and success.  There already have been so many of those miraculous moments and yet for us to have to climb each day separate from Sophie whom we loved so dearly, the word insurmountable comes to my mind.

It is not the *natural* order of life to bury a child.  So I would have to conclude that climbing through the grieving process would not follow any *natural* patterns either.  Certainly, there are opportunities to be transformed along the journey.  Navigating with the pain.  We *live* each day by the Grace of God.  Yet, still there are days where we shake our fists and a whisper turns into a scream.  

 I turned to the scream of One Man who made the ultimate climb,

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”–which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Remembering the promise that was made prior to His last scream, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” One day I will be in paradise too and HE has not forsaken me!   We will complete our climb through grief, our reunion awaits!  He blew into my lungs filling me with everything I needed to head for higher ground.  Hard pressed and still learning to climb through the brutal terrain of grief tender hearted and incomplete.  Until….