I thought I knew how this would all play out, I was so wrong!

I never knew that the loss of my baby daughter would give me the strength to endure the loss of my relationship with my brother. I realized the other day that God sent me through that unbelievably hard situation to gain tools for this current painful loss. I have come to believe that each painful experience breeds strength stored in the cells of my very existence to be able to walk through the next thing.

I had no idea that I would ever imagine that the kid I grew up with would be someone I would not be able to drop inside jokes to any more or run random movie quotes by and have an entire conversation based on that movie. However that’s what future predictions and expectations will do for me though. I get completely blindsided by a sudden change in my well laid plans. I realized that today as I was praying in my car.

A frequent occurrence for me is I get met with reality vs fantasy, I get confronted with this idea that I made-up in my head as a kid about what things are going to look like. Usually based on tv shows or movies where everything comes together in the end and everyone loves each other again. Happened for me about having babies, husbands and all kinds of other things. This time it happened with my sibling relationships.

My life was supposed to look like the Norman Rockwell pictures. big family meals. Everyone is there. All smiling.

Never in my mind did I ever think that I would not be in relationship with my siblings. People change over time. Even siblings. They change and move away from what they grew up knowing and so did I. I know today that there is a reason for everything and even though something happens near me it dosen’t mean it has to be my lesson to learn directly.

Do I trust God? This is the question that made me think of something different then my anger. Yes I do. Do I want him to makes sense of my current situation? Hell ya I do! Will he? Maybe not. Sometimes situations happen that cause my boat to rock but its not my storm causing the unsettling waters. There are days when I think about the things I would say to my brother if I saw him. They usually are not nice. That’s OK. The first thought is free everything after that is my responsibility to keep in check. That is grief though. It is messy and unpredictable. I have enough wherewithal to know I would have to make amends for my behavior and if nothing else that has saved me a lot of heart ache.

Life is what ever its going to look like. If I would stay off the results committee I think my brain would be much more relaxed. Unfortunately I have no way of knowing what new concept I need to adjust my thinking on until I’m in the middle of trying to understand why I’m unable to let go of something. That is why they say “everything I have ever let go of has claw marks all over it.”

I’m a work in progress and so are my relationships. God knows what He is doing. If there is nothing else I can take from this experience is that God is the one on the throne, in good times and bad, not me.