A wonderful novel that explores grief in all of its stages.
I think in life we always set out with good intentions. At least I do. I usually have these amazing thoughts, like I’m going to wake up as 6:00 a.m. and run before the day starts and I will feel fabulous. Usually though, if I’m lucky I managed to peel my workout clothes on at the end of the day, while the sun is setting hoping that I can still feel wonderful for at least doing it. However, I don’t. I tell myself, “Why didn’t you do it this morning?” Why are we like this in life? Why don’t we start patting ourselves on the back more and just allow ourselves to be somewhat fallible and human?
You may be thinking, “What’s she talking about? This is supposed to be about miracles and the miraculous medal.” Maybe you happened here by coincidence and now you are reading to just see where this goes. Well, life is utterly difficult, painful and sometimes little things like a miraculous medal can help alter my mood or my thoughts. I too, am just a normal person dealing with emotions, fear, and maybe this world isn’t what we thought it should be when were just children.
I want to be real with you. I want to tell you that last year I experienced losing two close friends–one to pancreatic cancer and the other to suicide. I want you to know that yes this page is about hope and miracles, but it’s also about the realness of how life can be forgivingly painful and also beautiful.
Do you ever feel like you found a book because you were supposed to read at that certain time? I do. I’m one of those quirky individuals that sees signs in birds, books and potholes. Literally. I somewhat kidding about the pothole in the middle of the road type thing, but a bump in the road can be that one moment that carves a more elegant feature in your soul. Back to the Book finding.
I recently read “Good Grief,” by Lolly Winston. What’s funny is I found out about this book through a “Chick Lit” reference in another book. The first line was given as an example–“How can I be a widow? Widows wear horn-rimmed glasses and cardigan sweaters that smell like mothballs and have crepe-paper skin and names like Gladys or midge and meet with their other widow friends once a week to play pinochle.”
If you knew me in person, than you would know that for one week, that’s all I could think about and when can I squeeze in my bookstore run. With a pair of furry slippers with a bunny face on the cover, this book image can be deceiving. Wrapped up with the ‘Chick Lit’ recommendation, I had no idea I was about to embark on a deep journey into my loss with recent loved ones and experience that wretched grief feeling Lolly Winston so deftly depicts. I didn’t not know that people could die young either. Of course, you know this. But until it happens to you, that was just something that happened in someone elses life. “Not Mine.”
Now I’m on the other side of the fence. And, life has a funny way of reminding you of your deepest pains. Yet, maybe that’s what we are supposed to do: purge our souls into this wide open space and just be honest with ourselves. I don’t like be reminded of why I lost two friends last year. Yet, “Good Grief,” did it in such a pure way, my soul opened up and begged to feel the hurt, the pain, and almost asking for a moment’s reprieve from the hidden places we can hide such things.
I am not here to tell you that wearing a miracle medal will heal all of your ailments. I am not here to tell you that miracles are this lofty thing that’s like the old testament times. I am here to tell you a miracle is a simple as waking up and finding a different perception.
“A Course In Miracles” stated, “A Miracle is a shift in perception.”
“Really?” What shift? What perception, I remember thinking in my mid-twenties when I studied this time during a darker period and I wanted to grasp that concept. It sounded so simple. Change your thoughts and change your life, I’m sure you heard that rhetoric, too. Yet, now that time has passed and I have watched the seasons change many times over, I am finding out what that means. I am learning first hand that a perception shift is really a choice. A thought. A way we view our world, our life. If we can manage to change the thought pattern of ‘damning-the-runner-girl-for- not-waking -up-at-six’ to “I’m alive, I count. There is still time in the day. I will be loving and give myself a break because sleep is important to too for your well-being.
If you are hurting, if you have lost someone you loved recently, do seek help and do allow yourself to feel the pain. Don’t be hard on yourself. Let the world continue on, while your heart and soul are healing. Time will find its way and reveal the hope you need to hang on when life can feel utterly bleak.
But most of all, remember, you are not alone. Pray for guidance. Feel that thought as a real feeling. There is something tangible in the air that you cannot see. Feel faith in the blue sky you can see. In the waking birds singing in the mornings. In the trees brimming with green glory and rusted colors of the fall. Feel faith in the mornings when you drive to work. Dare to imagine that although you miss your loved one, there will be a day soon when you will start smiling more with memories than feeling just pain. Remember to be thankful, to feel gratitude and to most of all, “Believe in Miracles.”
St. Catherine did. Her devoted faith to the heavenly father, blessed her with a vision that helped many. I am not going to share with you an excerpt from the AMM:
Then Mary spoke to Catherine: “Have a medal struck upon this model. Those who wear it will receive great graces, especially if they wear it around the neck.” Catherine explained the entire series of apparitions to her confessor, and she worked through him to carry out Mary’s instructions. She did not reveal that she received the Medal until soon before her death 47 years later. 
With approval of the Church, the first Medals were made in 1832 and were distributed in Paris. Almost immediately the blessings that Mary had promised began to shower down on those who wore her Medal. The devotion spread like wildfire. Marvels of grace and health, peace and prosperity, following in its wake. Before long people were calling it the “Miraculous” Medal. And in 1836, a Canonical inquiry undertaken at Paris declared the apparitions to be genuine.
There is no superstition, nothing of magic, connected with the Miraculous Medal. The Miraculous Medal is not a “good-luck charm”. Rather, it is a great testimony to faith and the power of trusting prayer. Its greatest miracles are those of patience, forgiveness, repentance, and faith. God uses a Medal, not as a sacrament, but as an agent, an instrument, in bringing to pass certain marvelous results. “The weak things of this earth hath God chosen to confound the strong.”
When our Blessed Mother gave the design of the medal to Saint Catherine Labouré she said, “Now it must be given to the whole world and to every person.” This quote is from : http://www.amm.org/aboutus/medal.asp.
Back to “Good Grief.” This book helped me have one of those good therapeutic crying jeers, like Scarlett O’Hara from “Gone With The Wind.”
Enough. Just know that with each day, something new can happen to you. And, maybe it will be a dream come true. Try to think positive. Be nice to yourself and remember, you are only human after all. And one more thought to pass along that helps me feel safe. I must confess, I took part of this quote from the scripture in the Bible regarding the Jabez, you know the one that found favor with the Lord? Anyway, every morning and night I add this phrase to my waking and sleeping thoughts, “Please keep evil and harm far from me.” Remember to ask these things and you shall receive them. I’m sure Jesus said something like that.
And, remember don’t forget to believe in miracles. The simple kind, like the soothing sound of the waves from the ocean. Find them, they are there. Look for them. Miracles are there for the taking.
~A lover of Miracles.
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