A Response to "Sorrow"

Edith, so many thoughts were buzzing around my head today after I read your post. Agatha and I would give anything to ease your pain and to lighten your burden. For what it's worth, here are my thoughts tonight:

Your Good Friday has already happened -- the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the incomprehensible. Remember what the last word means -- unable to comprehend, to wrap our minds totally around something.

You are in your Holy Saturday of this experience, and there is no telling when God's grace will finally help you to feel the peace of Easter. But stay in this Holy Saturday -- don't rush the healing, don't rush the time of uncertainty. Tend to your wounds like the women tended the body of Christ. That is your vocation right now -- to nurture yourself and to begin, little by little, to remember what it feels like to be whole. You can't relive whatever happened before Good Friday...you can only be where you are. And God's will for what happened and what is to come WILL be made known to you, as fully or in whatever time is perfect for you to know it. What we know that the women at the tomb did not, is that there IS reason to hope. That itself will make all of the difference in the world, especially on the gray days, the days in which the thought of leaving your bed seems impossible.

All of this being said, it is so understandable that seeing other married or engaged women would hurt you. That will eventually be manageable. What you can do, though, is put down those books, and escape into fiction, pop magazines with little substance, or into a list of the 100 greatest films. Eventually you will want to pick up your books for your dissertation and to get a new, and exciting game plan together. Journal, journal, journal. And as always, Agatha and I are here to help you get your bearings in the meantime.

Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. -- The Shawshank Redemption