HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 10/29/18

October 29, 2018

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

 “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

-Julian of Norwich

At a time when I thought my world had all but ended, when the realization was hammering at my heart that my daughter’s death was not some nightmare from which I would recover, but was for all time, a friend came into the room, put her arms around my neck, and said, “Everything’s going to be alright.” 

I thought she was crazy. And yet…and yet…was it possible that she was right?

I had an occasion, some years later, to be the consoler of a young woman whose son had lapsed into a coma from which he would not recover, and my words to her were the same. “Everything’s going to be alright.” And I felt my friend from that earlier time standing beside me, nodding – “See, that’s what I told you.”

Improbable though it seems when grief first assaults us, we do come to learn, though the surface of our life will often be in turmoil, that on a deep and unshakable level there is indeed a confidence that all is well.

Until that happens, we cling to the testimony of others and take hope: if for them, why not for us too?

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

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