Category: Hard days

Next 20 days of Advent | And not being believed.

Posted on by fabsharford

Boy. I tell you what, today’s Advent really took it out of me.  If you’re receiving the daily emails, you might have noticed today’s was a tad delayed.

Today was the hardest one so far, but not in a bad way.  Sometimes a sense of responsibility and the weight of words settles over me and I can’t shake the sense that – this one – this one I want to get right.  This truth is too precious to me to share flippantly.

I don’t know what to say.  I am out of words.  I am humbled, amazed, stunned, leveled by our God who has come to us in the dark of night.

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The Miraculous in the Messy

Posted on by fabsharford

I wrote an Advent devotional once before.  I still remember the feeling as my fingers flew over the keyboard. It was pages of some of the finest writing I’d ever done; heart and soul left on the page.  I was so confident God was in it, that when the feedback came, it took me a beat for to understand what I was hearing.

“It’s too…depressing.”

His words echoed in my mind all day long, until they finally solidified into a simple fear and a question that haunted me for little while too long:  Oh shit.  Is it just me?  Am I the only one who thinks this whole think is kind of a cluster?  

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July 9.

Posted on by fabsharford

Today is the seventh July 9th since the July 9th that I flew from Italy to London.  I touched down, and drove to our destination, and turned my phone onto the wifi and heard the soft ping of the message letting me know it was finished.  He was gone.

I sat in a room by myself for a few moments, and heard strange sounds coming out of me that were sobs I supposed, but felt fake.  And then I got up quietly and left the 15+ women I was leading on a mission trip to get on a train to get to my sister’s house.  I sat in the fading rain, waiting for her to pick me up from the station, my heart hollow and numb and absently watched as the clouds parted and the light and mist turned into a rainbow.

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Is this grief?

Posted on by fabsharford

The first time I was personally introduced to the concept of ‘grief’, it was almost seven years ago to the day.  I was sitting across the table from a dear friend in a coffee shop.  I was trying to wrap words around all the strange feelings I was having after coming back from a couple of weeks with my father – who was – at the time – dying of pancreatic cancer.  Dying, but not yet dead.

“Oh Fabs,” she said to me, leaning close with tears in her eyes, “you’re grieving.”

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And we’re live…

Posted on by fabsharford

Today I launch my grief class.

I have many blogs coming your way on grief, but for today, I’m just going to tell you some true things.

I didn’t know what today would feel like.  I thought I might be anxious about if anyone is even going to want it, or nervous because it’s not exactly what I want it to be (because any time you lock your thoughts in stone, you think of how you could have said it better, clearer.)

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