Today is one year since my mom passed.

I do not have words of wisdom or personal insights to share this day, but I have found some quotes & scripture that acknowledge feelings I have had over this first year of life without Mom and the loss that most acutely acquaints me with grief.

“It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses. ”

― Colette

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief.”

― William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 3

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

– Psalm 73:26 NIV

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”

― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole. I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

– 1 Peter 1:3-7 MSG

“… We won’t need to wrestle well [in between the two gardens], because we will be well. Whole. Complete. Assured. Secure. Certain. Victorious. And brought full circle in our understanding of truth.”‬

– Lysa TerKeurst, It’s Not Supposed to be This Way (I was reading this book when my mom passed away and this description of full redemption and the freedom of being in presence of Christ was simply profound.)