Losing My Mother

Recently, a very dear friend of mine loss her mother and it made me think about the day my mother passed and the years following her death.  I remember that feeling so well, but it is a feeling that cannot be explained by words. The one person who has been with you your entire life is gone. How can a person cope with that? Losing your Mother becomes a feeling of losing a part of your soul. You go through stages of sadness, angriness and then sadness again. The feeling that it will consume you at some point turns into the realization that it has.  At first, there was not a day that I did not think about my mother, and wonder if she knew how much I loved her and what an impact she had on my life. So many people kept telling me to put it into the Lord's hands but I couldn’t let go. A part of me associated the pain of losing my mother with still having something of her to hold onto. I could not fathom leaving my pain with the Lord; it felt like if I surrendered my pain to Him that I would cease to remember her. It just didn’t make any sense to me that I could have her for 21 years and then all of it is over within a minute of death having happened. Why did she have to go so soon? I kept asking myself that over and over again and there was never an answer to the question.   But the reality of the matter is no time would have been right for her to leave; I would have never been ready. I found peace in knowing that my mother lived a life that ensured her a place in heaven but the desire to keep her here with me was stronger than the thought that she had gone on to a better place to be pain free and whole for an eternity with no more suffering for her. I think that if the Lord intends for me to just have her memories and her grave to go to, than I have to take advantage of what He has given me. I have had no choice but to go on and life does go on but I often feel incomplete because my mother is gone. Some days it seems like I cannot face tomorrow without her in it. I have often thought when will the pain go away? After all it has been 14 years since she passed.  It takes time, I guess, is all I know. TIME! How much time do you give yourself to get over such a thing? With each passing year, the pain seems to be less, and I think that I have made great steps towards finding peace without my mother here. But the least little thing can bring the pain rushing back as if I am in the very moment the doctor told us she was gone.  This is a memory that will forever be etched in my emotional database, and seems to resurface without warning. In my darkest hours I cried out to the Lord for comfort, and He did not forsake me.  I know without Him; I would not have been able to endure such a great loss.  He is my comforter. Thank you Lord for giving me hope, joy and peace.  By the way, I still miss my mother very dearly, and often wonder how different my life would be if she were still here.  But then I realize this was all part of God’s divine plan for my life. He already knew that I would have to bear this cross, and He knew how it would mold my life.  So I smile because God is the King of master plans.