Grief.

Sometimes I think I read her blog and she is inside my head. I have a friend whom I have never lived in the same town as, or really shared community with- yet, we are in community together. I read her blog and sometimes I quote her here. I like her a lot. We exchange emails from time to time, and I find that I would love to just sit and talk for hours over coffee. But I live here, and she lives there- and so our community of friendship is found on the blogger.

Tonight I read her summary of this year, which dealt with a tremendous amount of grief and loss, but also growth.

As I read her thoughts I took a moment, a quick half second as to not let the thoughts carry me away- about the tremendous loss I too faced this year. The bottom that was hit. How everything hit the fan. And then before getting upset in unhealthy dimensions of continued frustration, I was able to pause for the joy that came too.

I am thankful that in the midst of trial and tribulation, and even most recently having just spent some time with Tex and his family over the Christmas break- that my joy was not robbed by grieving what was lost. True that memories can play tricks with us, and that the recent week has polluted my normal thinking with grievances about my relationship with my mom, childhood Christmas memories passed, and most tenderly what glances communicate that words can't with a beloved friend whom still knows the story. I am thankful that as I enter into 2011 I am not the same girl who stumbled into 2010, hoping to capture perfection, but instead understands the depth of her own sin, struggle, and defiance... but also knows in a new heightened awareness the capacity of love and forgiveness, friendship and pursuit, and mostly that you can come through loss, and you can overcome depression. You can. You can. You can.

But that doesn't mean that its your struggle alone. And the passage below relays to me that I've hurt those I've loved this year and in the past because of what I was losing. I get it. I'm hopeful that this is a lesson I only have to learn once. I'm thankful that in the midst of what I lost and had to let go of, I was able to capture the one thing that mattered... and that was a profound sense of purpose and self in Christ Jesus.

"I learned that there are as many ways to die as there are to live, and that death changes the core of those left behind. I know it's changed me. I learned that death takes bodies and leaves souls but depression takes the soul and leaves the body and no matter which robbing occurs there are those left to deal with the newly empty space. This year both of those losses found me."