seeing as if in a mirror...

A member of our Consumed staff - Abby Amos - sent an email to the rest of us tonight concerning her grandfather. I asked her for permission to post it here - she consented, and therefore I will. It is as follows: my dear MN family members, my heart is grieved. it's ironic to me how many different forms of grief there are. grief over heart break. grief over a wayward brother. grief over moving to a different state, starting a different life. grief over a human life created out of wed lock. grief over disease. and on and on they go. grief is a sickness. an illness that overtakes your soul. anne lamott talks about it in her book, "traveling mercies- some thoughts on faith". basically she talks about how most people deal with grief and that is to keep busy, deny whatever is going on, and live in disillusion. when you do that "whatever you use to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you. you begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination." i guess God wants me really soft and illuminating. which sounds like wonderful traits to have, that's certainly the woman i want to be...yet the process is more then i can bare at times. i figured i'd email all of you because i don't think i have the strength to make another roud of sick phone calls. grampy had a full body scan today and they found another tumor in his chest. mom called it a "mass". sounds better, i guess. i can hardly type the words. it just rips and tears at my heart. i just can't believe it. i can't. my loving, sweet, tender-hearted, selfless, kind, faithful grampy. grampy who sings "miss america" to me. who tells me how beautiful i am. and he really thinks that, too. grampy who pretends to ask me out on a bowling date...pretending he's this shy teenager. grampy who prays faithfully for me every day. grampy who tells me how sweet i am. grampy who loves God and has faithfully lead my entire family to follow Him as well. grampy, who every one at church knows because he loves them all and wants to meet each person that walks in the door. my grampy that i love more then i can express has cancer. with two tumors in two very bad places. i am eating the animal crackers that grammy and grampy just sent to me in the mail. they don't have a dime to their name, but they wanted to send me a bag of 2 pound animal crackers because they know how much i love them. each animal i eat makes me sadder and sadder. it makes me think, when the bag is gone...will grampy be too? so, yeah. grief reigns in my heart. the pain is physical. i wanted you to know because it's easy for me to stuff it. to bottle it up. to pretend it's fine. but i need you to pray. for grampy. for grammy. for my family. for me. i love you guys. thanks for being my family. ~abby