Overwhelming

 Hello there Beauties!

Back when my mom died (6 years ago) I was mad at the world. I still am a little mad, but back then, it was way worse. As a Christian, it was difficult to cope because I often wondered why God would do this to me. I remember when most of my high school teachers would comfort and support me, but it made me so upset and jealous that they still had their moms, and God must have hated me because He took mine away from me. I thought back to every sin I'd committed up until that moment and wondered if they were truly damning enough to warrant the tragedy that befell 15-year-old Bella. Had I been a horrible person who deserved that pain? How was it that these people were so lucky to have their moms in adulthood; it must've meant that they were more loved and preferred by God. In the early stages of my grief (probably the first 6 months), I met a lot of people who were just like me: young and motherless. This made me realize that this specific grief was not unique to me and that there was no way God hated all these people. This sort of made me dial back a little, shift blame and anger (from God to me and the hospital), and trust that God knew what He was doing. 

Anyway, there I was, depressed, broken, and trying to cope. I lost a lot of myself over the years, and I am still trying to get back to being me. However, I was sitting in my Intermediate French class around March of this year when my lecturer (an older woman) mentioned that her mom was sick and she needed some time to care for her. I was so thrown by her comment, that that very evening, I stayed motionless in my bed unable to move for the entire evening. This brought me right back to thinking that God must hate me because there is no way that I am in that percentage of people who do not get to have their mom in adulthood. I questioned everything in that moment, from what I did wrong, to what I didn't do to help the situation. I have always been able to remember every detail about when my mom died (this event spanned 12 days: Monday, January 8, 2017 - Thursday, January 19, 2017) and I relived it in a way that made me shudder that evening. I felt like something must've been wrong with me.

Many of the Christians I consulted told me that God knows best and I should trust that He will take me through this period of grief. But I often pondered the verse from 1 Corinthians 10:13 which loosely translates to "I will not give you more than what you can bear," and I felt that this is clearly more than I could/can bear. 

Please note that the grief, anger, and blame have still not left. Jamie Anderson said, “Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” It has gotten a bit easier to manage over the years, but it still claws at my very soul daily, and sometimes it is so overwhelming I feel like I might explode.

I remember this because I saw a Tiktok today (totally unrelated) that prayer is person-specific and answered according to God's will. This has totally sent me back into that feeling that God hates me, so I need a little prayer please. 

QOTD:  What are your coping methods when you feel like you might explode?