Put on a happy face

For the past couple of weeks I have been near the verge of tears for most of it. I don't really know what started it. Maybe the prospect of family reunions without my Little Angel, maybe I just never had sufficient grieve time with all the comfort and support from the Lord, friends, and family I had right after he died. I don't really know, but the fact remains that I was having a hard time emotionally. My visiting teachers came by today and I had resolved to tell them that I was struggling with my grief and all the multitudes of things that I had to do. I was to the point that I wished that I could just freeze time, do my grieving, and then make time come back when I was done. Impossible I know, but it didn't stop me from wishing that. I actually didn't tell them because they forgot to ask me how I was doing, probably mainly because one of them knew I was struggling to get out of my shell with my Mary Kay business, and she might have thought that was all that I was struggling with.

Moosehorn was interesting to say the least. For the first half of it we weren't even officially in the campsite. They hadn't opened yet because all the snow we had this year slowed down the "cleaning process" I guess. I was without my wonderful husband Rocket Scientist for that first half, and I was missing Little Angel. The day we finally were able to get into the campsite, Rocket Scientist showed up. At the latest possible moment since we were to make dinner that night. I was a lot better when I heard the noisy muffler drive up, but still really missing my Little Angel.

The next day Bug disappeared. Sure it was only for a few minutes, but within that little time frame, I lost it. After stumbling, crying, and yelling for him, I collapsed on a big rock, shaking and not really having complete control of my body. Before my body lost function of its muscles from all the emotional trauma I was going through I had heard that he was found. The first thought that came to my mind was, "Why wasn't I informed anyway???" I just sat there on the rock and sobbed uncontrollably, hardly able to keep myself sitting since my muscles were refusing to work. I truly hope I hadn't hurt any of my family members by not reacting how they might have expected me to react while they were trying to console me, but I was still too much in shock over the whole thing. I had been trained to deal with such emotional pain though. I shut myself off. Refused to feel anything, and while I'm like that, I don't respond much to anything, and anything pretty much goes. Sometimes I don't even realize that I shut off emotional contact (bad AND good), and this was one of those times. It is a natural (at least for me) response to so much emotional pain. Maybe that was why I couldn't force my arms to hug my sister while she was trying to console me, maybe not. But it is probably a reason for me not really feeling the love that she was trying to bestow me. Like I said, when the emotions turn off, you can't feel either.

Pavlov just got his engagement broken off, and reading his blog has made me realize that I wasn't the only one to have the feeling of loss at Moosehorn. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in your own feelings that you don't realize the pain that others are in. I have been struggling with the fact that if you are feeling down, the best thing is to lift others spirits by serving, yet people also say that if you are grieving, you should just grieve until you are Ok, and then you can get on with life. But what if life doesn't want to pause for your convenience?

I'm reading a book entitled Miracles Happen. I just started it today in fact. It is the biography of Mary Kay Ash. I have only read six chapters, and this woman is AMAZING! First off, she started her company after she had retired. She just couldn't sit around and just accept the fact that she was done working. A month before her company was scheduled to open, her husband had a heart attack and died. She opened anyway. Why? "[She believed] that work is often the best antidote for grief." Hmmm. Interesting concept. Why not I give it a try? Me and Rocket Scientist are struggling money-wise anyway and I need to help get some income coming, why not go in with both feet instead of just dipping toes in?

Chapter six of this amazing book (that I think everyone should read...) is entitled Put on a Happy Face. Everyone has hard times, and deals with trauma some point in their life, but if I can just put on a happy face every morning and lift even one person's day, even if it is just me, why not? Happy people are just... happy, and everyone wants to be around them. Despite how I feel in the morning, I am going to walk out of my room with a smile on my face, and go, go, go!