Make me a channel of your peace.
Death is my greatest fear. The loss of those I love. Having only had the death of my wonderful father to relate to, I fear experiencing that pain again.
Watching my dad die nearly tore me apart. No one explains the way grief can strip you down to your most vulnerable; how the pain of a loss can leave you tattered and on the brink of survival. Perhaps I underestimate myself and my own strength, but I feel that I barely survived losing my dad.
I lost over a stone in weight. Then I became bulimic - the purging allowed me to feel momentarily that I was ridding myself of the awful sick monster of grief that had nestle in my stomach and sought to pull me apart. I became dependent on drugs; oh yes my biggest shame, the very thing that would devastate my dad. But he wasn't there. He wasn't there anymore.

I am no longer bulimic or an addict. I never regained the weight that I had lost. I feel much older than my years. I become tired easily. But despite the sporadic, back-and-forth of the grieving process that still goes on, I have adjusted to life after loss. To life after trauma.

But wait, there's more. Anticipatory grief still remains. I know my mother will die. And others too.
So I stand like a tiny ship ravaged by a storm, but still there, if a little shaken. I lost my sail, my anchor. And I know another storm will come. How will I withstand it when it does?

My anchor, my sail, must be God. There is nothing else left for me to cling to when I weather the new storm. I will lose a piece of myself with each loss. So I pray that underneath all I am is God. Faith. The only thing greater than death and grief. I pray that when I cannot stand and am stripped to my nothingness, God will be there underneath my bones.
"it was then that I carried you."

Make me a channel of your peace. Make me your instrument. I cannot do it alone.