Moments with Mary

THE GRIEF DRAIN Grief sucks the life right out of you and can deplete any and all energy within.  It feels like some negative source unplugged you and every feeling inside seems both overloaded and drained.  Not only does emotional energy exhaust you, physically it feels like the weight of the world lies on your shoulders.  It’s a drag having to work so hard just to walk across a room.  This exhaustion occurs because hearts are heavy and weighed down with sadness Where once we felt grounded, it feels like we lost ground.  Some of the negative energy is caused by our own stubbornness to do grief on our own, so we pretend to the outside world that everything is fine, when inside there is this vast expanse of inner pain and lifelessness.  What would really help is if we could be plugged in to some type of outlet and re-energized so that at the very least -- getting through this day wouldn’t feel like such a burden. Don’t lose heart.  Your energy flow will...

God designed us so that when we experience intense stimuli, we can release this amazing clear liquid called Tears.  Even the tears we shed when we are happy have a different chemical make-up than the tears we cry when we are sad.   Tears from grief come out as an emotional response and relay our feelings about what we are going through.  More importantly, grief tears are a visible form of releasing emotional distress.  In essence, the emotions that flow out of us in the form of tears are a sacred kind of holy water.  These sacred tears flow out of a place in our bodies where we physically see -- with our eyes – and convey such a powerful message that comes straight from our souls - a place we can't see.   No one can fully understand what it is like to grieve until you go through it.  But in God’s wisdom, God made sure that when we are grieving, there is a way we can release that distress within us.  It’s a known fact, we emotionally and ...

No doubt throughout the grief journey, there will be times when feelings will heighten and result in the experience of intense sensitivity…to what people say, to the slightest provocation inside our thoughts, or how we feel about what is taking place, and even more importantly, how we react or respond to them.  We become delicately aware of strong feelings we didn’t realize were there and even the slightest offhand remark by another can set us off.  Even our physical bodies will startle easily, and sensitivity to any light or sound will become more intensive.  We can easily become overwhelmed as a result of our grief, and our bodies become drained of energy.   We find ourselves fighting back the emotional intensity by saying something we don’t mean or responding in ways we wouldn’t normally respond. What really is taking place is an intensive sensitivity to the loss of our loved one.  We go into battle with our grief.  The intensity of our loss puts us...

TRAPPED INSIDE GRIEF.  Just how long does grief last?  This question is difficult to answer because there is no exact time limit to grieving.  Grief is a journey of movement and therefore there isn’t a date to finish grief because every relationship and circumstances are different and so healing for each person is going to be different too.  That being said…”you never get over the death of a loved one, you get through it” is an incredible truth.   Grief experts advise that the grief period normally lasts two to four years.  You “know” when you are through the hardest part of the grief journey when you have readjusted and settled into your life without your loved one, and, you feel an encompassing peace, not just for your loved one, but for you too.  Even after you feel you are through the worst of the grief journey, there will always be occasions when you earnestly miss your loved one even though this “missing” can occur years down the road. ...