You gain SO much perspective when your person dies. I’m starting my third year without my husband. Looking back at my life, I think so many of us try to force-create all those perfect moments and perfect scenarios in our lives, but sometimes good enough is good enough. From early on, in our teens and twenties, we dream of the perfect mate, the perfect wedding, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect holidays, etc. We put sooo much constant pressure on ourselves every step of the way.
Now I realize that none of that is what really mattered. In the end, it’s not the big milestones or the grand gestures that we miss, or that one amazing, perfect Christmas party that went off without a hitch. The perfect mate doesn’t exist. Neither does the perfect job. The perfect house doesn’t exist. Every house comes with various problems and needs continual maintenance and care as time goes on.
Just like our relationships. Each of our relationships needs continuous care in order to grow. Each and every one of us is a work in progress. We’re all here to learn from each other. Like the saying goes, everyone comes into your life for either a reason, a season or a lifetime. They’re in your life to teach you something, and you’re in theirs to teach them something. We’re all helping each other get further along on our individual paths.
We need to take the pressure off ourselves. Nothing perfect exists in this world. Sometimes, most times, good enough is good enough. In fact, I’ve learned, it’s wonderful. Perfection is over-rated. When I reflect on my marriage, it’s all the thousands of little things I miss. The hug and kiss everytime we left the house and came back. The first kiss each morning. The “I love you” said each night before going to sleep or before hanging up the phone.
It’s the meals together, talking about our day, and discussing everything under the sun. It’s the figuring out problems together. It’s the grocery shopping together, where he made me laugh in the middle of the store aisle. It’s the shared jokes, his sense of humor, the finishing of each other’s sentences, like we had our own private language. It’s the looks and glances where we spoke whole conversations without uttering a word, because we knew each other that well. A thousand little things. A million.
It’s the dreadful emptiness in your life when ALL those things are taken away with brutal indifference. It’s the finality of never being able to get back to what once was, and you didn’t get a vote. Looking back, was it perfect? No. Definitely not. Sometimes it was messy and we were not our best selves. But we were doing life together and figuring it out as we went along. Together. It was beautiful and wonderful and I miss it. And even the bad times were better than THIS.
That said, as I begin this third year, I do have hope for my future now, where I didn’t in the early days of my grief. I know that if I wake up and still have breath, that God has a purpose for me and He’s not finished with me yet. He has work for me to do. I still put pressure on myself to be further along and to be doing more with my life, this precious, short time here on earth. But it dawned on me, that perhaps my mere survival of this enormous trial is ‘good enough’.
Maybe the fact that I’m still here, taking care of myself and my home the best I can (some days better than others), doing light exercises to move my body, nourishing myself by cooking healthy meals, putting my phone down and turning off the TV, and reading instead to nourish my mind, getting out and doing life the best I can, spending some time with friends and family, taking my dog on long walks – maybe all of that, though not much in the world’s eyes, is good enough for God.
Maybe I’m shining even a small light to the people around me. Maybe, by not giving up, it sets an example for others to not give up in their struggles. Maybe that’s my purpose right now – to be an example of faith and perseverance. Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just muddling through one day at a time. I get impatient and want to do more and be more, right now. But the grip of grief still keeps me exhausted most of the time. So maybe I need to be gentler on myself and remember that good enough is good enough.
RELATED ARTICLE: The Gift in My Grief
STRUGGLING WITH GRIEF? Reach out to Griefshare. They helped me tremendously! I highly recommend them! (I don’t get paid to recommend them.)
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