God, forgive me my numbness.

Today is the day I understood that words can be remarkably empty.
Today's also the day that everyone's saying I love you. Today is the day for hugs, for a hand on the back, on the shoulder, the hand, the whatever you can make contact with.
Today is the day crying comes in spurts and is sometimes contagious. Today is the day I admit I had never thought I'd write an obituary. Today has been a bizarre day, breaking the land-speed record by lasting about 200 hours, just like yesterday.
Today I am hungry, un-hungry, over-stuffed and starving. Today I appreciate kind words. Today I understand that "I'm sorry" is a truly functional PHRASE. It means, "It happened, it sucks and I can't change it." That's it.
Today few things are "important."
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Today I realize that I don't know who's ready to hear it. I don't know when they will be gone. I don't care if you hate me, if we lose our friendship that day or maybe speaking privaleges for a decade. You needed Jesus and I should have told you.

FORTUNATELY,

(thank Jesus for the FORTUNATELYs),

fortunately, my spirit of regret and self-loathing was renounced early Thursday morning. Because it plauged me I had to ask, "Is her blood on my head?" It was a REAL, real question, in terms of bluntness, in terms of how sincerely I wanted an answer. My friend said, "No," in an exhale. That means it was emphatic. NO very much, he meant. Continuing, "No, not at all," to be sure. "No..." Sure he'd keep going I interjected, perhaps to cover my perceived stupidness, "Well then, I've been very misinformed." Turning right down Norfolk St from Paisley....
"That's not your fault, that's not your decision." It sounds like the same things I've been told other times by half a dozen people after some other traumatic incident. "It wasn't your fault; you can't blame yourself. It was his decision to hurt you." Yep. I look forward to the day I accept that. I took these words because they were the best I could get right then. I trust this guy. I was actually kinda relieved, initially cuz I was expecting the answer to be complicated, even if it did lean toward the negative. "Isn't there responsibility or obligation..." I trail off, truncated halfway, "Yea there's responsibility but," - it was striaght-up -, "in the same way that, if you HAD shared with her, and she HAD become a Christian" (a light bulb flicks on in me) "then the credit wouldn't go to you." I overlapped the last few words, "I....approve of that notion," with the dryest tone you might imagine cuz that's how I exaggerate. I threw my hand over my heart - as I usually involuntarily do when I'm speaking from it - and utterted something else to attest to my full believing. "That is intensely liberating," perhaps, rounding a left onto Wellington from Gordon. Thank You, Jesus, for the truth.

Nonetheless, yesterday was the day I grasped how incredibly ______ the Gospel is. I can't even write this sentence now, without sounding trite. Since I have found that little slice of freedom, I don't very often think about how many others I should be tellings because you just don't know. It seems strange now. I am however, going to send that letter to my brother that I should have been done with by Thanksgiving Day. My family's important...and I'd hate to have copped out on them by keeping the story to myself.

Today is the day I realized that NOTHING brings you comfort like Christ in a time of mourning. (How much more this comfort when the mourned had Christ also!) But today, for these, for those who are not me, grief is suffocating. There is no outlet, there is no..... trite, again. What do I know of grief?