Finding Beauty in the Struggle

For weeks, I have found myself struggling with depression and anxiety. I feel exhausted almost all the time. It’s difficult to get out of bed most mornings. Few things bring me joy. Making simple decisions feels impossible. This is not a new experience for me, but something about this particular season of my life feels different. I think it’s because what I have been calling depression is actually grief, and what I have been calling anxiety is actually fear of future loss.

My maternal grandmother died in February, and now, almost four months later, I am struggling to accept the reality that she’s gone. Some days, I feel numb. Other days, I feel like every piece of my mind, body, and soul hurts. My grandma was my last remaining grandparent and the one I was closest to by far. I spent many weekends and summers at her house when I was a kid. I made many trips to see her and do laundry when I was in college.

In many ways, my grandmother was more present for me than my mother was. My grandma taught me to read when I was in first grade. She taught me to sew by hand and on a sewing machine. She taught me to use a typewriter. She taught me to make deviled eggs. She taught me to grow plants. She taught me to appreciate antiques and study family history. She taught me to love the beach and to collect seashells. Most importantly, she taught me to stand up for myself and for those I care about, no matter what.

Now, looking back, I see that my grandmother spent the last two decades of her life preparing me for her death, and then waited for me to be sitting right beside her, holding her hand in her final moments. I believe it was her final gift to me. Despite all of our disagreements and power struggles, she loved me well right up to the end. My grandma left me with a legacy of humor, feistiness, and stubbornness that will not be soon forgotten. She spoke her mind without hesitation or any notion of a filter for her thoughts and opinions, which sometimes got her into trouble. Most people were too intimidated by her outlandish confidence to question her.

My grandmother’s influence seemed eternal, and I suppose that is the real reason it’s so hard for me to believe that she is no longer here with me. I continue to have dreams several times a week that she is not really dead, that the final breaths I watched her take were all a cruel joke, that she is still here somewhere if I could only find her.

My grandmother was ninety-four years old, and she lived a full life. It was her time to go by all practical accounts, but she left me as the matriarch of our family. Her only child, my mother, has now been gone for seven years, so I am now the eldest woman in our family. It is a role I would gladly give back to either of them in an instant. Sometimes I feel like I am is the only one left to tell my mother’s and grandmother’s stories, but I know that my daughters and my younger brother are living out their legacies as well.

Everything continues to feel so out of balance. I often wonder when I will truly be happy again. I wonder when this grief and sadness will loosen its grip on me. I know that grief is not a process to be rushed. I have been down this road before with my mother, with my stepmother, with my uncle, and, most recently, with my maternal grandfather.

I know that there is always beauty in the struggle if I will only look hard enough. For my birthday in April, my in-laws gave us a Southern magnolia tree. My husband planted it in the corner of our backyard in memory of my grandmother. It revealed its first bloom to us just in time for Mother’s Day.

Instead of asking God to take away my pain, I am asking him to pull me closer to him in my grief.

In one of my favorite Bible verses, the apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome:

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” (Romans 8:38-39 ESV).

I am asking God to increase my courage and my faith. I am asking him to give me peace despite my heartache. I am asking him to make me more grateful and kind instead of more bitter and selfish in my pain. I am asking him to remind me of his goodness through his creation—each sunrise and sunset, each flower’s bloom, each baby’s laugh.

I am asking him to reveal his beauty in the midst of my struggle.

Lauren Flake is a wife, mom to two girls, watercolor artist, seventh-generation Texan, and early-onset Alzheimer’s daughter. She is the author and co-illustrator of two award-winning children’s books for grieving preschoolers, Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go? and Where Did My Sweet Grandpa Go?, and the editor of Love of Dixie magazine. She loves green tea, dark chocolate, and collecting all things turquoise.