“This little light of mine…I’m gonna let it shine…” So go the words of a Sunday school song of ancient memory as I sit down to write today’s blog post – and in them I’m finding a source of solace and strength as I continue walking my healing path more than five years after a daughter’s loss.
It seems to take forever for light to show up again in your life after the death of a child – or after the death of anyone else in your life that you loved with all your heart. The loss is just so huge and the darkness of death so complete at the time that the concept of light becomes an alien subject for your mind to comprehend.
Yet the truth is that the light of your existence remains, forever shining bright beyond the darkness of your grief, and eventually revealing itself to you again as you begin the journey of healing that allows you to once again see and value its brilliance – and its vital importance to the completeness of healing that awaits your open and aching heart.
As I’ve referred to in earlier posts written to this site, the light comes back into the reality of your life as you allow the sweetness of loving memories of your lost one to penetrate the pain which has blocked it. And as you do so – as you open your heart wider and wider to the beauty of memories which still live within you, the light grows in intensity and warmth to comfort your soul and ease the pain.
Somewhere within its growing brilliance you will discover another dimension of light, that which is referred to in this Sunday school song of old – the spiritual light of your personal spirit which carries its own healing powers – still inextricably linked to the spirit of the one you lost, but now suffused with a depth of acceptance of your loss and reconnection to your loved one’s spirit that you completely lacked before.
It’s as you “let your little light (of the spirit) shine” – reaching for those loving memories and that spiritual awareness of the healing light within your own spirit – that your grief becomes transformed, your understanding changes, and your healing progresses and grows in strength more each day for the rest of your life.
The light is within you.
With Love and Understanding,
Ken Matthies
HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience
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