Learning to breathe

I am learning how to breathe in a world that split in two. There is the life I wake up to, and the one I still grieve in my dreams.

The one I hold, and the one I held.

The one that is, and the one that should have been.

Every morning, I open my eyes and return to this timeline, this version of reality where something is missing… someone is missing.

And yet, there’s another version of me that still walks in the garden of before.

Who doesn’t flinch when certain names are spoken.

Who doesn’t carry a hollow echo inside her ribs.

Who doesn’t have to convince herself that God is still good on the days she can barely feel it.

I live here, but I ache there.

I laugh here, but I cry there.

I survive here, but I died there.

No one really tells you how loss rewrites your calendar, how it tears a seam in your soul and leaves your spirit walking in parallel with a memory.

Grief is a clock with two hands, one ticking forward, and one dragging backward.

It is the most disorienting form of devotion…

Because I loved so deeply, I ache so deeply.

Because I hoped so purely, I grieve so painfully.

I am living two timelines.

One where I show up to work, answer messages, buy groceries, fold laundry, and keep breathing.

And another, where I sit at the altar of what was lost and light a candle in my heart for the life that unraveled like thread in the wind.

Sometimes I feel like Lazarus must have felt…

Half alive, half buried.

Still wrapped in grave clothes, even after being called forth.

I walked out, yes.

But part of me stayed inside the tomb.

And yet… the Shepherd still calls my name.

Even across timelines.

Even through tears.

Even through time and space and sorrow.

He reminds me—He’s the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

That means He is God in the timeline I lost, and God in the one I now live.

He is God in the garden and God at the grave.

God when dreams bloomed, and God when they withered.

God when I danced, and God when I dropped to my knees screaming.

He does not abandon either version of me.

The one who smiles on command, and the one who sobs in silence.

The one who is still becoming, and the one who is still bleeding.

And maybe…

Maybe healing isn’t choosing one timeline over the other.

Maybe it’s letting the Lord hold both.

Maybe it’s letting Him weave what was into what is, until the ache becomes an anthem,

and the loss becomes the lens

through which I see His love more clearly.

Even now.

Even still.