Wednesday’s Word-Edition 122
November 25, 2015 | My Jottings
“But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don’t ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both?
The good news is that if you don’t seal up your heart with caulking compound, and instead stay permeable, people stay alive inside you, and maybe outside you, too, forever.
This is also the bad news, not because your heart will continue to hurt forever, but because grief is so frowned upon, so hard for even intimate bystanders to witness, that you will think you must be crazy for not getting over it. You think it’s best to keep this a secret, even if it cuts you off from certain aspects of life, like, say, the truth of your heart, and all that is real.
The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will ever get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to.
Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches.”
From “Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair” by Anne Lamott
I think God sends me books to read that help me so much. I know a book I am reading now does this. It is the story of a young woman who was a Baptist missionary to the area of Dutch East Indies from 1938. She and her husband Russell went out as a missionary couple. They were caught up in WWII and both were kept in separate Japanese prison camps starting in 1942. Both suffered terrible hardships. She learned at age 26 that her husband had died of disease in his camp. She had another 1 1/2 years of suffering before she and her other missionaries were rescued. Her name is Darlene Deibler Rose and the her book is called Evidence Not Seen.
Nancy, I bought the book and it arrived today. I look forward to reading this and thank you so much for the recommendation! xoxo