February 3, 2024 | Dear Azalea



Dear Azalea,

What is the sense in spending my time and energy wishing I could see you, speak with you, hold you? It’s not constructive. All it does is suck me inside myself and isolate me from my family and responsibilities. Why do I feel like I need you to be with me now when I know full-well in my heart that I will see you again at the end of my earthly life? It feels self-centered of me to want you so, and like a waste of time in the full scope of my life.

The Lord knows how impatient I am, and now He has given me a task that requires the utmost patience: to wait my entire life to see you again. It feels like a cruel joke sometimes.

I feel like I am walking a tightrope ever since you died, teetering between taking the time to miss and mourn you and focusing on moving forward with my life and responsibilities for the sake of my husband and children. I’m trying to do what I ought for them, but this urge to drop everything and focus on you comes when it’s the most inconvenient. And then I feel guilty for abandoning everything and everyone if I give in to it. I feel that way right now as I’m writing this letter, actually. It feels selfish.

And yet, if I ignore this urge, I just get irritable with my family anyways, and what good is that? I don’t even know why I keep getting so irritated with them, but I’m finding myself unable to let things go the way I used to, holding on to more petty feelings at every little perceived slight. Or I keep trying to escape in every way I can. Here I am having just committed myself to loving better in lieu of your death, only to immediately be cold toward my loved ones. How feeble I am.

I keep wondering if maybe I’m self-sabotaging in a way, like maybe I want all my relationships to fall apart so I just don’t have to try anymore. But again I ask, what good would that do? Then I would just be missing you on top of being alone, and all the more easily tempted to give in to every self-centered desire.

Clearly, my vocation in life serves to keep me in check, to give my life balance. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting tired of walking this tightrope. And as I mentioned, the Lord knows I’m not a patient person. At this point, it just feels like everything I do is the wrong thing, and like nothing I do is good enough.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to let you go and learn to just happily, patiently wait to see you again while moving on with my life…but I doubt that’s going to be any time soon. Please pray for me and help your mess of a mother figure out what to do in the meantime, my sweet girl.

All my love,
Mom

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